MONEY ORDER:
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
As long as they can pretend Oswald didn't fire a shot at anyone on 11/22/63, most Internet conspiracy theorists are happy.
SANDY LARSEN SAID:
Well, there *is* more evidence that Oswald didn't fire the rifle that day than there is that he did.
And there *is* more evidence that Oswald was framed as the buyer of the Carcano than there is that he actually bought it.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
You should be thoroughly embarrassed at having written the above nonsense, Sandy.
Click here:
SANDY LARSEN SAID:
Let's make a deal, David.
I'll read and study your article if you demonstrate how it was possible for LHO to have paid for the rifle given that the money order he supposedly used to pay for it was never processed. The proof for this is on the money order itself... or rather, not on it. For the money order has no Federal Reserve Bank markings on its back. Or its front.
If that can't be explained, then what we have here is evidence Oswald was framed.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Sandy,
The C2766 rifle was positively mailed by Klein's to Oswald's P.O. Box in Dallas. Waldman No. 7 proves that fact. And the money order was stamped by Klein's. So Klein's was definitely PAID the $21.45 for the rifle, and Klein's did the processing on their end by depositing it into their bank account. And that money order has Oswald's writing all over it.
Oswald ordered that rifle.
Klein's shipped that rifle to Post Office Box 2915 in Dallas, Texas.
Klein's received payment for that rifle (otherwise, of course, they never would have generated the order form which became Waldman Exhibit No. 7).
Case closed.
SANDY LARSEN SAID:
You say, "So Klein's was definitely PAID the $21.45 for the rifle..."
How so? Postal money orders are, and have always been, processed by Federal Reserve Banks (FRBs). (Since the Federal Reserve System was created in 1913.) Only when a check or money order is cleared by a Federal Reserve Bank is the recipient's account credited. And, when cleared, the back-side of the check or money order is stamped by the FRB.
So Klein's definitely wasn't paid $21.45 for the rifle... at least not from the money order supposedly written by Oswald.
BTW, all national banks are required, by the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, to be members of the Federal Reserve System. And they are required to use the FRB's check clearing system. Klein's bank, First National Bank, was indeed a member of the FRB and so used their check clearing system.
FRB Procedures for Processing Postal Money Orders:
http://tfm.fiscal.treasury.gov/v2/p4/c700.html
I'll give you a second chance to answer my question, David. How was it possible for LHO to have paid for the rifle, given that the money order he supposedly used to pay for it was never processed?
If you (or anybody else) can't answer this question, then the postal money order is evidence of LHO being framed as the buyer of the rifle.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Sandy,
You think Klein's would have shipped a rifle to P.O. Box 2915 (which they definitely did) WITHOUT being paid for the merchandise?
How silly.
Let me guess -- you think Waldman #7 is a fake document too. Right?
Related Links (re: bank stamps):
EducationForum.com/topic=17428&comment=220887
JFK-Archives.blogspot.com/jfk-assassination-arguments-part-947
SANDY LARSEN SAID:
Okay David, so you concede that LHO did not pay for the Carcano with the money order that was used as evidence against him.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Huh? When did I ever say that? I never said any such thing. Of course LHO paid for the Carcano with the money order in evidence (CE788). It's got his writing all over it.
How did Oswald's handwriting get on this money order if LHO never had it in his possession?....
SANDY LARSEN SAID:
You conceded when you didn't answer my question, even after I had posted it a second time.
In both your responses you completely ignored the fact that the money order had not been processed by a Federal Reserve Bank. As though that isn't an important point.
So I won the debate by default. That's what happens when one doesn't "show up" for a debate.
As for how LHO's handwriting got "all over" the money order, I would suggest the same way my dad's handwriting got all over the excuse notes I wrote to my home-room teacher explaining why I had been absent from school. Forging someone's handwriting isn't necessarily a difficult feat, and isn't an unheard of thing. Given that the money order is evidence that someone was attempting to frame Oswald, as I have demonstrated, it follows that the source of the handwriting be considered suspect as well.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Naturally. Nothing new or surprising there. Everything is "suspect" to a conspiracy theorist.
So, with respect to the evidence and the testimony associated with Lee Harvey Oswald's rifle purchase, the following things would have to be true, according to many CTers....
...William J. Waldman of Klein's was a big fat liar.
...Oswald's writing was forged on the money order.
...Oswald's writing was forged on the American Rifleman magazine order form for the rifle.
...Oswald's writing was forged on the envelope that housed the M.O. and the order form.
...Waldman Exhibit No. 7 is a complete forgery.
...The FBI agents who helped search the Klein's files on late November 22 and early November 23 must have been told to lie their asses off if they were ever to be asked this question: Did you help search the Klein's records in Chicago and were you present when the microfilmed records were found in those files which included an order form clipped from a magazine which had the name "A. Hidell" on it, plus the internal Klein's order blank (Waldman #7), which verified that a rifle bearing the serial number "C2766" was shipped by Klein's to "A. Hidell" at P.O. Box 2915 in Dallas, Texas, on March 20, 1963? .... Because, according to many conspiracy theorists, those FBI agents actually witnessed the retrieval of no such "Hidell" microfilmed records in the Klein's files at all.
...The whole $21.45 money order, in every respect, is a fraudulent document (and not just Oswald's allegedly forged handwriting) --- e.g., the "GPO; Mar. 12" and "$21.45" markings that are stamped on the front of the money order. And the Klein's "Pay to the order" stamp on the back is fake too (i.e., somebody stole Klein's rubber stamp [or created a perfect duplicate] and stamped the phony money order in order to fool everybody into thinking Klein's really did deposit the M.O. into its First National Bank account --- I'd love to see some proof to show that this hunk of fakery ever happened too; but, as always, no CTer on Earth can possibly prove that the "PAY TO THE ORDER" stamp on CE788 is a fraudulent Klein's endorsement).
See how silly this starts to get really fast when you have to pretend that Lee Harvey Oswald never ordered Rifle C2766 from Klein's Sporting Goods? Embarrassing, isn't it?
Regarding the discovery of the original money order that was found in Virginia, hundreds of miles from the offices of Klein's Sporting Goods in Chicago, there are these excerpts from Vincent Bugliosi's book:
"[9:00 AM CST, 11/23/63] Although the FBI already has a microfilmed copy of the money order used to purchase the Carcano rifle, in preparing for trial prosecutors always want the original document. After depositing the money order into its bank account, Klein's, of course, no longer had the original money order.
[...]
[7:00 PM CST, 11/23/63] The IBM computers at the U.S. Postal Records Center in Alexandria, Virginia, have been humming for nearly seven hours now...searching for the original money order used to purchase the assassination weapon. There's no telling how many man-hours it might take to do a manual search.
Suddenly, a match is found, and the money order is located. The center rushes the original money order by special courier to the chief of the Secret Service in Washington. A handwriting analysis by a questioned-documents expert for the Department of the Treasury shows that the handwriting on the money order is that of Lee Harvey Oswald.*
If there is one thing that is now unquestionably certain, it is that Lee Harvey Oswald ordered and paid for the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle that was found on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository Building shortly after the assassination."
-- Vincent Bugliosi; Pages 206 and 237 of "Reclaiming History" ©2007
* Sources --- CE1799 @ 23 H 419 and Warren Commission Testimony
of Alwyn Cole @ 4 H 373.
DAVID VON PEIN LATER SAID:
As for the lack of any bank stamps appearing on the back of Oswald's postal money order, I don't have a definitive answer to explain it. But I'd be willing to bet the farm that there IS a reasonable and non-conspiratorial answer to explain the lack of markings on the back of that document without resorting to the conclusion that the money order was manufactured and faked by a group of conspirators in a complicated and intricate effort to frame Lee Harvey Oswald for John F. Kennedy's murder.
And I know that conspiracy theorists who think Oswald never ordered a rifle from Klein's Sporting Goods in early 1963 have a heck of a lot MORE evidence to explain away than I do. Just check my list above.
SANDY LARSEN SAID:
I read the source [used by Bugliosi in the quote seen above], CE 1799. Just a report written by some anonymous person. Not exactly impressive evidence when compared to a missing Federal Reserve Bank stamp.
I don't know where Bugs got the 7 hour computers-humming information.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
I'm not sure where Vince Bugliosi got the "7 hours" information either, but I think it's a reasonable figure. Vincent's "7 hours" remark comes in his chronological examination of the events as presented by Mr. Bugliosi in his "Four Days In November" chapter of "Reclaiming History", and Vince has it listed as something that took place at about 7:00 PM CST on Saturday, November 23rd, which was well more than 24 hours after the President's assassination. That would mean that people in Alexandria would have started searching for the original money order at around 12:00 Noon (Dallas time) on November 23. Sounds about right to me.
However, there is a document which provides a lot of additional details about the discovery of the original postal money order that was found in Alexandria, Virginia, on the night of 11/23/63. It's a four-page Secret Service report that appears in Commission Document No. 87, HERE.
RAY MITCHAM SAID:
From "Harvey and Lee" by John Armstrong:
"All US Postal Money orders have unique serial numbers. In the fall of 1962, Oswald purchased numerous money orders from the same downtown post office and mailed them to Washington, DC in order to repay a loan from the government for his travel expenses incurred when he returned to the USA from Russia. These money orders were purchased in numerical sequence beginning in November, 1962. These serial numbers show that some 1200 money orders per week were purchased at the downtown post office in Dallas. At this rate we see that Oswald's alleged purchase of a money order on March 12, 1963 should have been numbered 2,202,011,935. But the serial number of the money order published in the Warren Volumes was more than 118,000 numbers higher. At the rate of 1200 money order per week, this money order should have been purchased in late 1964 or early 1965. In other words, this money order could easily have been pulled from a stack of fresh, unsold money orders by a postal official in Dallas, sometime after the assassination, and then given to the FBI. A close look at the details surrounding the "finding" of the money order the day after the assassination strongly suggests that this is what happened."
[-- John Armstrong]
Any comments, Dave?
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Why couldn't the Dallas post office have simply run out of their supply of blank U.S. Postal money orders shortly before Oswald purchased his M.O. on March 12th? It's fairly obvious to me that that is what happened.
Does John Armstrong really think that the Dallas post office had an unlimited supply of money orders on hand at all times? How silly.
At some point, the supply of money orders would run low and the Dallas post office would replenish its stock. And when they do get fresh stock, the serial numbers are, of course, going to be much higher than the ones they just ran out of, since they are "U.S. POSTAL MONEY ORDERS" with unique serial numbers attached to each one and are being continuously supplied to post offices and other institutions all around the entire country, not just the Main Post Office branch in Dallas, Texas.
Why on Earth is my above "Ran out of stock and simply replenished their supply with money orders that obviously would have much higher serial numbers" explanation not even to be considered by conspiracy theorists like John Armstrong?
~big shrug~
BTW, HERE'S another official document (an FBI FD-302 report this time) which verifies that U.S. Postal Money Order #2,202,130,462, signed by "A. Hidell", was in the possession of the FBI in Washington on November 24, 1963 (the date in the lower left corner of the report).
A quote from that FBI report:
"This money order was hand carried to the FBI Laboratory where it was turned over to Special Agent James T. Freeman."
JEAN DAVISON SAID:
"The money order wasn't cashed" debunked....
It has long been argued that since the money order for Oswald's rifle lacked a bank stamp on the back, it was never cashed. For instance here:
http://harveyandlee.net/Guns/Guns.html
Recently Brian Castle debunked that claim on the Re-open Kennedy Case forum by making an observation that seems obvious now but that no one seems to have noticed before.
QUOTE:
"The scuttlebutt is that the money order was never cashed or deposited in any US bank.
However.... take a look at the money order. Here's a picture:
http://history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/Vol17
See the little holes in the paper? They're "punch holes", made by a "keypunch machine". In the old days, there was no ASCII and the computer people commonly used a "Hollerith code" for punch cards.
The idea is, that WHEN the money order or check is processed by the bank (or a clearing house), it's run in a BATCH along with a thousand other checks, and each batch is handled by a keypunch operator with a keypunch machine [......]"
UNQUOTE
Bravo, Brian Castle, well done!
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Thank you, Jean. And thank you, Brian Castle.
And also see:
http://jfkassassinationforum.com/topic#12446
SANDY LARSEN SAID THIS.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
How do you think the holes got in the money order, Sandy?
If a banking institution of some kind didn't punch those holes, then who do you think did?
And how did Oswald's writing get on the same money order if Oswald himself didn't put it there?
And do you really think Klein's would have shipped a $21 rifle to somebody (Oswald/Hidell or anybody else on the planet) without having first been PAID for the item they definitely shipped to PO Box 2915 in Dallas on 3/20/63? (And Oswald didn't use "COD" for the rifle like he did for the revolver he bought from Seaport Traders.)
JON G. TIDD SAID:
David Von Pein,
A question. Just a question. Assume arguendo there was a high-level conspiracy to kill JFK. I know you don't believe this, but you're a reasonable person, and I don't think it's unreasonable to ask you, for sake of argument only, to make an assumption you otherwise reject.
If you're willing to make this assumption strictly for the purpose I'm asking you to make it, I ask for your opinion. Given the assumption, do you think the conspirators (or some subset thereof) would stop at anything to cover their tracks and obscure the facts of the assassination?
I don't think they would, but I'd like to know what you think. I'm not a conspiracy-lite guy, BTW. For me, it was unbridled conspiracy or no conspiracy.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Given that set of circumstances and alleged conditions (with "high level" being the key words), then the answer to your inquiry is probably No, they would likely stop at nothing to try and guarantee success in covering their tracks.
But just how HIGH (in a "high-level conspiracy") do you think it went? How many people? And what did each of the conspirators truly know about the assassination plot you are alleging? And how did they manage to manipulate Lee Oswald on both Nov. 21 and Nov. 22 in order to make it truly SEEM like he was a lone assassin? And how did "they" manage to get Oswald to act so guilty after the assassination (if, that is, you think Oswald was really innocent of firing any shots at the President)?
In my opinion, to believe in ANY conspiracy in the JFK case ("high level" or otherwise, except for perhaps a small two-man plot involving Oswald and one other unknown person who chickened out at the last minute and decided not to aid Oswald whatsoever on Assassination Day), you'd have to believe that the conspirators/henchmen/assassins/plotters were able to do something quite remarkable --- They were able to make Lee Harvey Oswald HIMSELF (via his own actions and the lies he told on Nov. 21 and 22) act like a lone assassin. And a subservient puppet like that doesn't come along every day of the week.
JON G. TIDD SAID:
I believe the whole of the official record is a fake. Why? If you're going to kill the President of the United States and try to cover it up, you're in a position and willing to fake whatever's necessary.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Even MULTIPLE backyard photos---when faking just ONE such photo would easily have sufficed?
And the faking of the ENTIRE paper trail linking Oswald to the rifle (and the pistol)---when planting JUST THE RIFLE itself (with Oswald's prints on it) would easily have sufficed?
How much of this "Fakery" crap is a reasonable and sensible person supposed to swallow whole, Jon?
Evidently you think the answer to my last question is --- As much evidence as there is in the entire Kennedy case.
IMO, when somebody has to resort to a belief like this --- "I believe the whole of the official record is a fake" --- that person should probably start to re-think his entire approach to the evidence. Because "the whole of the official record" in this (JFK/Tippit) case is a pretty substantial "whole". It's not just one or two items. There's a bunch of stuff that would need to be faked by the conspirators and/or cover-up agents. And to believe that "whole" is a fraudulent "whole" is just plain silly.
SANDY LARSEN SAID:
The problem still stands that a Carcano rifle wasn't paid for with this money order. Nor was anything else.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
But, Sandy, you'll readily admit (I assume) that the method of punching holes in a deposited money order IS, in fact, a legitimate and valid method utilized by banking institutions to process a document like a U.S. Postal Money Order (in lieu of physically stamping each item with an inked rubber stamp), correct?
However, you now want to move the goal posts again and play "keypunch expert" to try and still cast some doubt over the legitimacy of Oswald's postal money order. Right?
In summary....
It's fairly clear from some recent Internet posts I've linked to above that the holes that are visible in Lee Oswald's money order (CE788) provide a strong indication that that money order WAS cashed and WAS processed somewhere after Klein's Sporting Goods deposited it into their First National Bank of Chicago account on March 13, 1963.
Conspiracy hobbyists can now only look at the holes and complain that they don't line up right, or aren't in the correct sequence, or whatever, in order to still cling to their treasured belief that the money order was faked from the ground up in an effort to frame Lee Harvey Oswald.
Again I'll ask --- How much of this "Fakery" crap is a reasonable and sensible person supposed to swallow whole?
SANDY LARSEN SAID:
If the TSBD Carcano was bought from Klein's, somebody paid for it. But not with the Hidell money order. The evidence proves it.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
The "evidence" actually proves just the opposite (of course).
Waldman 7 indicates the Hidell rifle order was paid via "M.O." [Money Order].
The CE788 money order was stamped with a Klein's stamp on the back. (Is that fake too?)
And Waldman 7 proves that Klein's did ship Rifle C2766 to Hidell/Oswald on March 20.
So even if I were to accept the crazy notion that the money order was never cashed (which I do not accept, of course, with that M.O. being retrieved by the Secret Service in Alexandria, Virginia, on 11/23/63 [see CD87]), we still KNOW that Rifle C2766 was sent by Klein's to Hidell/Oswald, regardless of what was done with that money order AFTER Klein's deposited it.
And how did the money order get to the Federal Records Center in Alexandria, Virginia, if it wasn't cashed and then processed by SOMEBODY?
Did a money order with the name "A. Hidell" on it suddenly fall from the sky and into the Records Center building in Alexandria?
SANDY LARSEN SAID:
Even if banks did use punch holes for endorsements at the time, so what? The Hidell money order has no such holes punched.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
And after receiving your Masters Degree in "Keypunch Hole Evaluation" just a few hours ago after your one-day crash course at Keypunch School, you actually feel confident enough to make the statement you just made about the Hidell money order having "no such holes punched" in it?
Amazing.
GARRY PUFFER SAID:
DVP never learns:
From http://HarveyAndLee.net:
"Robert Wilmouth, Vice President of the First National Bank of Chicago, was interviewed by the FBI on 11/23/63, but was never asked if the unpaid $21.45 postal money order was deposited to his bank. Wilmouth told the FBI that a postal money order, after deposit to his bank, would have been sent to the Federal Reserve Bank and then sent to the US postal processing center in Kansas City. He told the FBI that the Federal Reserve Bank would be able to identify the money order by number. It would have been easy for the FBI to ask the Federal Reserve Bank to identify the $21.45 postal money order by the number that appeared on the FNB of Chicago deposit, but they never asked and for a very good reason. The unpaid postal money order was never endorsed by the FNB of Chicago, never routed to the Federal Reserve Bank and never endorsed by the Federal Reserve Bank. The Federal Reserve Bank would not have a copy of this or any unpaid money order." -- John Armstrong
[...]
See what the backs should look like at:
http://HarveyAndLee.net/MoneyOrder
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
The "stamped" examples on that HarveyAndLee page aren't money orders. They are vouchers and checks. Bulk money orders are obviously processed in a different manner, as Mike Giampaolo has indicated at another forum.
GARRY PUFFER SAID:
Now apparently DVP is claiming that the punch holes take the place of the stamps on the back. Good God.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Earth to Puffer! ---
The punch holes indicate **PROCESSING** by somebody.
Who do you think punched the holes in CE788 --- Santa Claus?
SANDY LARSEN SAID:
It has been brought to my attention that I haven't really explained how the holes punched in the Hidell money order are to be decoded. Yes, I see that I am guilty of that. So I will explain it here. It's not difficult.
But first, for the record, the topic was first brought up on this forum when David Von Pein proclaimed that the "money order wasn't cashed" theory had been debunked. He and other LNers came to that conclusion when they noticed that one Brian Castle had theorized that the holes were punched during the processing of the money order. They assumed that the holes were being used as a substitute for traditional bank stamps, and that this explained the absence of those stamps on the reverse side of the money order. As I will show [HERE], they are wrong.
[...]
LNers may want people to believe that these holes are punched when the check is being processed, and that this somehow signifies that the money order was actually cashed. But that is simply not true. The holes merely duplicate what is printed on the front of the money order and has nothing to do with clearing of the check. The holes are punched at the same time the money order number is printed, before the money orders are even issued to post offices.
[...]
So in summary, the ten rectangular holes represent the money order number and are punched when the money order is manufactured. The round holes represent the price/value of the money order and are punched when the money order is purchased.
I like to use the Hidell money order against LNers because it is extremely reliable evidence that Oswald was being framed as the shooter of the assassin's rifle. It's impossible for LNers to explain away how bank stamps can be missing from a canceled money order. But of course they will try.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Sandy,
Unless the procedures and methods of punching holes in U.S. Postal money orders have changed dramatically since 1963, then your explanation of WHEN the holes were put in the Oswald/Hidell money order is flawed. Because I found pictures of two other U.S. Postal money orders that both have specific amounts shown on them, and nowhere on these money orders do I see any punch holes whatsoever:
Now, granted, the two examples I cited above are money orders that were issued decades after Oswald purchased his M.O. for the rifle in '63. The two examples above come from the years 2000 and 2011 (I couldn't find any pictures of other non-Oswald money orders from 1963; maybe somebody else will have better luck). But do you think the method of identifying both the serial number of the money order and the dollar amount via punch holes has changed (and, in effect, been completely eliminated) since 1963?
I'll admit, I have no answer to my last question. Maybe you're correct and the holes were punched in the Oswald money order prior to a time when it would have been processed at any banking institution. But as my two money order examples above indicate, I think there's room for doubt when it comes to your explanation about WHEN those holes were punched in the Oswald/Hidell money order.
Even if the holes do represent what you say they represent (the serial number and the amount of the money order; and you make a good case for that being true), why couldn't those holes have been placed there by a banking institution as part of the processing of the document after it was deposited by Klein's into their First National Bank account (which is a deposit that certainly DID take place, as we can see via the Klein's inked stamped on the back of the money order)?
In other words, can it be PROVEN that ALL of those holes punched in that $21.45 money order were put there BEFORE (and not AFTER) Lee Harvey Oswald dropped that document in a mailbox on March 12, 1963?
There's also the information supplied by Mike Giampaolo at Duncan MacRae's JFK Assassination Forum, which indicates that during the 1960s, a system by which keypunch operators would handle thousands of checks per hour was in place in many major U.S. cities. Now, yes, this excerpt below (from Giampaolo's post) talks about only "check-processing", and not specifically the processing of United States Postal Money Orders. But it's quite possible (even likely) that a similar keypunch process for handling money orders in this manner was in place in the 1960s as well....
"IBM 1401 Data Processing System 1960's era.....A visit to the check-processing department of a high-volume office like Atlanta or Jacksonville would mean walking into a room in which 70 to 85 women sat busily clicking away at Gray, 36-pocket IBM 803 proof machines, punching in payment amounts and bank identification numbers with one hand and, with the other hand, picking up checks one at a time from a stack and pushing them into a slot. The machine sorted the checks into pockets for eventual return to the bank on which they were drawn, while a record of the activity was printed on paper tapes. A skillful operator could handle 1,200–1,500 checks per hour."
[End Quote.]
Based on what I just said and presented above, I still think that the holes in the Hidell/Oswald money order could certainly be part of the result of bank processing and handling. But if (somehow) I am definitely proven wrong, and Sandy Larsen is proven correct, I'll certainly be willing to admit it on this forum in the future.
But if the day ever comes when I am positively proven wrong on this "Holes" matter, then the conspiracy theorists who think that the Hidell money order is a fake document that was manufactured by plotters who were trying to frame Lee Oswald should be scratching their heads and asking themselves this important question:
If these conspirators were so good and so thorough that they could perfectly fake Lee Harvey Oswald's handwriting on CE788 (the money order) so that it would fool some of the nation's top handwriting analysts (who had the ORIGINAL money order for comparison, not just a photocopy of same)....then how come those very same conspirators were so stupid and careless as to not place on the phony money order a single bank stamp that would indicate the document had been properly processed? After all, according to CTers, those plotters were able to fake the Klein's endorsement stamp on the back of the money order. And yet they failed to fake any bank stamps whatsoever. I wonder why?
Sandy,
Don't you agree with me that the question I just asked above is a reasonable one? And don't YOU too wonder how those super-skilled evidence manipulators could be so perfect one minute and yet so amazingly inept and bumbling the next?
DAVID VON PEIN LATER SAID:
More information on the punch holes (from 1962 newspaper accounts), dug up by Tom Scully, is available HERE and HERE (also pictured below).
Looks like a nice big defeat for the "LN" side regarding the "punch holes".
Celebrate, CTers! Looks like you won this one. [Or have they? Click HERE, HERE, and HERE.]
But, I can't help but repeat....
How in the heck do CTers think the Hidell money order managed to get to the Federal Records Center in Alexandria, Virginia, if it wasn't cashed and then processed by someone?
~big shrug~
And I also still stand by this comment I made earlier in this discussion....
"As for the lack of any bank stamps appearing on the back of Oswald's postal money order, I don't have a definitive answer to explain it. But I'd be willing to bet the farm that there IS a reasonable and non-conspiratorial answer to explain the lack of markings on the back of that document without resorting to the conclusion that the money order was manufactured and faked by a group of conspirators in a complicated and intricate effort to frame Lee Harvey Oswald for John F. Kennedy's murder." -- DVP
BOB PRUDHOMME SAID:
You've almost given in to the possibility of a conspiracy, Dave, and it is obvious you are now grappling with your inner demons.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Not even close, Bob.
The lack of a bank stamp (or even two) doesn't prove that money order is fake. It's got OSWALD'S writing on it and it's got KLEIN'S stamp on it. And it's a document that perfectly aligns with everything found in Waldman Exhibit #7 --
>> The "Hidell" name to whom Klein's mailed the rifle.
>> The PO Box number to which Klein's sent the rifle.
>> The exact dollar amount ($21.45), which is precisely the amount found in Waldman 7 as well. (And the "M.O." notation written by Klein's right underneath the "Amount Enclosed" line on Waldman 7.)
>> And the dates line up nicely too (March 12 for the M.O. purchase; and March 13 on Waldman #7) --- although CTers think it was impossible for the letter/money order to get to Chicago in just one day; but a 29-year veteran of the U.S. Post Office [Jimmy Orr] thinks otherwise....
DAVID VON PEIN SAID [IN THIS DISCUSSION]:
Jimmy, in your experience, in general, how long does it take an air mail letter to go from Dallas, Texas, to Chicago, Illinois (provided the letter was mailed no later than 10:30 AM local Dallas time)?
JIMMY ORR SAID:
David,
Cancelled in Dallas by 10:30 AM and flown to Chicago that afternoon. Arrival for mail processing at a Chicago General Mail Facility during the early morning hours of the 13th and on the street for delivery to Klein's that same day. Makes perfect sense considering the volumes handled in 1963.
[End Quote.]
~~~~~~~~~~~~
So everything about the money order aligns with the Klein's internal paperwork. So that means KLEIN'S was a major part of the plot to frame Oswald too, if the CTers are right about this thing. And that's not a reasonable thing to think, IMO.
HENRY SIENZANT SAID:
Why are you assuming a PO Money Order requires a bank stamp?
That hasn't been demonstrated anywhere, as far as I know.
Typically, there's a claim the MO should have one, then that's "demonstrated" by switching to a different financial instrument, a personal check, and a check is shown with the bank markings. But as I've pointed out in the past, those are two entirely different financial instruments, and there's no reason to assume they'd be handled the precise same way.
A personal check is backed only by the amount of money in the person's checking account. It can be overdrawn, and checks can bounce.
A Post Office Money Order is backed by the full taxation power of the U.S. Government. It can't be overdrawn, and the government has the power to raise taxes to pay its bills. In addition, because a Money Order is paid for by the purchaser at the time of purchase, it is more valuable than a personal check for the same amount. A personal check can bounce, a money order can't.
Given those differences, I've asked conspiracy theorists on a number of occasions why we should assume the two financial instruments should be processed in the same way by banks, and never gotten a satisfactory answer.
I think the problem here is that conspiracy theorists are putting forth an assumption as a fact (that the MO should have a bank stamp), and nobody is questioning that assumption.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Well, maybe you're right, Hank. I have no idea really.
But as far as my previous assumption (brought forth by other people online in 2014 and 2015) that the punch holes that are present in Oswald's money order were placed there as a substitute for an inked stamped endorsement of some kind, I stand corrected on that wrong assumption. And I say that based on the 1962 newspaper article that Tom Scully posted online today [November 10, 2015].
But your thoughts, Hank, are interesting ones to consider as well. It's certainly not very likely that a United States Postal Money Order, which as you say is backed by the U.S. Government, is going to bounce. And it was paid for by Lee Oswald when he purchased it at the Main Post Office in Dallas on 3/12/63. So we KNOW that the U.S. Government (the post office) got paid its $21.45 for the amount of the money order. Otherwise, the M.O. would never have been handed over to Oswald in the stamped amount of $21.45.
Thanks for your post, Henry. It gives me even more things to consider with respect to the lack of any bank markings on the back of Oswald's money order.
I have never even considered the loopy idea of that M.O. being faked by a group of patsy framers, however. That idea is ludicrous, in my view. It's only because these things (like "the lack of bank stamps" topic) are brought up over and over again by the conspiracy theorists that makes me even want to look into them superficially (let alone in great depth).
But, of course, a JFK CTer sees sinister, underhanded activity almost everywhere he looks --- even, evidently, at Klein's Sporting Goods in Chicago and the U.S. Post Office in downtown Dallas.
TOM SCULLY SAID:
Sorry Brian, Jean, and DVP, banks did not Key-Punch 1963 P.O. Money Orders....only the Post Offices did, at the time of and in the amount of each purchase. [See this link.]
JEAN DAVISON SAID:
Thanks for that research, Tom, I'm impressed. I agree that the P.O. created the key-punch holes. However (a big "however"), I don't think that this in any way establishes that the money order was not cashed. Your documentation indicates that the purpose of putting money orders on key-punch cards was to allow them to be mechanically processed. Machines called key-punch readers would read and record the dollar amounts punched into the card.
As you know, the official version is that Klein's deposited Oswald's $21.45 m.o. along with a large number of others (Waldman's testimony and Waldman Exhibit 10 showing a total deposit of $13,827.98).
According to another document [HERE], a vice president of Klein's bank stated that this $13,827.98 was deposited and that the $21.45 postal m.o. was sent to the Chicago Federal Reserve Bank on March 16.
If this isn't what happened, what did happen? I've never seen anyone spell out the alternative scenario if the m.o. was never cashed. The plotters framing Oswald always seem to be all-powerful and yet incredibly inept. They couldn't even produce a cashed money order for the murder weapon?
Other problems. If the rifle was never paid for, was it shipped by Klein's anyway? If not, how'd it get to the TSBD? Why should I believe "the money order was never cashed," when it raises questions like these?
IN A MESSAGE POSTED BY JAMES DiEUGENIO,
JOHN ARMSTRONG SAID:
As usual, the DVP's are presenting only part of the story. My question to you [DiEugenio] is why in the world do you even give these people the time of day?? You can spend a lifetime refuting their silly claims, and in the end what you have done is hopeless because these people will always come up with new ways to debunk anything that points to a conspiracy. When you find someone, anyone, who makes a practice of debunking you have a choice to stand beside them or stand against them--there is no middle ground.
Now, with that said, what do you think serious minded researchers think about people who believe in Judyth Baker, or DVP or McAdams [or] any of the other pundits who never do any creative research, but limit their work to debunking?
I see that some of these idiots are saying that bank employees "punched" rectangular holes in checks and money orders after they were deposited to a bank. This is absolutely ridiculous!! One of these idiots claims that IBM reader/sorter #1219 and #1419 were used to make these punches. Jim, if you or anyone gives a xxxx about accuracy, then simply go to the IBM website and look up IBM reader/sorter #1219 and #1419. These are magnetic ink readers, repeat magnetic ink readers, and do not punch holes in any checks or money orders or deposits of any kind.
[...]
An explanation is needed as to how the ink from the postal stamp and signatures can "bleed" thru to the other side of the money order (look at the postal money order from 1961, no bleed-thru whatsoever). Postal money orders were made from a card stock similar to an index card or an IBM type punch card-between 90# and 110# paper. The paper stock was crisp, firm, and ink "bleed-thru" to the reverse side was virtually impossible.
The "bleed-thru" of the ink is a strong indication that postal money order 2,202,130,462, shown as CE 788, was not original card stock. The "bleed-thru" is an indication that the paper upon which the original money order was printed is light enough to allow ink "bleed-thru." I don't understand how or why this was done. But I do know that the original postal money order disappeared long ago, and only FBI photographs remain. Why, how, and by whose authority caused the disappearance of the original money order is unknown. Only black and white photographs remain.
JAMES DiEUGENIO SAID:
This started with Davison--who apparently has all kinds of idle time these days--surfing over at Greg Parker's ROKC. She finds a post by a guy named [Brian] Castle, and this post questions whether or not the postal money order was ever actually cashed.
My question would be: Who is [Brian] Castle and does he really know this issue back and forth? Because it is a highly complicated one, with layer after layer of subterfuge by the FBI. Which was then accepted as fact by the WC.
Jean Davison does none of that questioning of course. Because she is not interested in doing actual research, or finding out what the true facts are. She's like a dog with a bone.
So what does she do with this half baked observation instead? She passes it on to DVP, who she knows is her trusted flunky and will buy anything she says or does. And guess what? She is correct.
Without doing one ounce of verification or review, DVP announced that all the work done on the postal money order has been "debunked". And he jumps on this site--just like Jean knew he would--and pronounces with 100% metaphysical certitude that such is the case. Therefore wiping out the work of the late Ray Gallagher, Gil Jesus, David Josephs and John Armstrong.
And then, McAdams leaps up and shouts, "Congratulations!" As the reader can see, this is not research at all. It's the way a political campaign works. In this instance, Jean was like Karl Rove, finding something she could use to debunk a claim by the opposing candidate. She passed it on to her messenger boy DVP who dropped it in our midst without doing any due diligence. And then McAdams acts as the audience, furnishing a self reinforcing reaction.
Except, this is not a political campaign. It's the search for what really happened to President Kennedy. Therefore, it's supposed to be a forensic and scholarly quest for a true evidentiary record, since we know the WC was a falsity of immense proportions. But that is not what they are about. So none of the three did any review of the facts, either internal to this particular [Brian] Castle observation, or whether this Castle claim fit in with the rest of the actual adduced record.
And today there is a real record on this transaction which the WC completely ignored. Castle's observation made no sense to begin with, either on its own, or as part of the Gallagher-Jesus-Josephs-Armstrong revealed record. But that meant not one iota to them.
But even in spite of this, DVP still tried to argue his way through to preserve Davison's credibility and to savage the critics. Which is why he is a zealot. And as John [Armstrong] noted, some people here actually briefly bought into this piece of salesmanship--because that is what it is, not scholarship. But really all it did was show that the Three Amigos never read David Josephs' latest two-part work on this issue. Which incorporates all the previous work and adds new things to reinforce it. Because that is real research.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
I've already admitted that I was wrong about the punch holes being placed in Oswald's money order as a part of processing the M.O.
Here's exactly what I said yesterday....
"Looks like a nice big defeat for the "LN" side regarding the "punch holes". Celebrate, CTers! Looks like you won this one." -- DVP; 11/10/15
What do you want now---a pint of my blood? Geez.
And maybe you'd like to ask John Armstrong about that "OUT OF SEQUENCE MONEY ORDER" theory of his. Ask him if he really thinks the Dallas Post Office was the ONLY post office selling U.S. Postal Money Orders in early 1963.
And if we want to get into a debate about which side produces more lame-ass theories and pure speculative nonsense relating to the JFK assassination -- LNers or CTers -- I could go on for days about how the CTers of the world have added more sheer crap to the table than all of the LNers of the planet combined. And I've documented thousands of examples of this at my own website.
JAMES DiEUGENIO SAID:
I mean the bleed through. I don't see how it can be ignored.
It really does seem to me to be a big faux pas, one which the WC apparently swallowed.
I mean can someone explain it innocently?
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Sure. There must have been a "heavier hand" being applied by both Lee Oswald (whose written words are bleeding through just a little bit on the CE788 money order) and the postal employee who stamped the M.O. in the lower right-hand corner. More pressure on the pen or the inked stamp means more ink being absorbed by the paper. Hence, it bleeds through to the other side.
If the 1961 money order mentioned earlier by John Armstrong has no bleed-thru, and IF it was the exact same thickness of paper stock as CE788 (which I don't suppose can ever be confirmed with 100% certainty), then I suppose that would indicate the people who wrote on and/or stamped that 1961 money order just didn't apply as much pressure as Oswald and the post office clerk applied to the CE788 money order on March 12, 1963.
Is that "innocent" explanation not nearly good enough for you, James? (Silly question, I know.)
Plus, it's also possible (I suppose) that between 1961 and 1963, a lighter weight and thinner paper stock was being used for U.S. Postal Money Orders, which would, of course, lend themselves more to "bleed-thru".
EDIT: And by far the best explanation for the "bleed-thru" on the money order comes from Tim Brennan, HERE.
INSTANT REPLAY....
JAMES DiEUGENIO SAID:
So what does she [Jean Davison] do with this half baked observation instead? She passes it on to DVP...
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Totally untrue. I merely saw Jean's post at the McAdams forum and decided to re-post it here. Jean wasn't "passing" anything on to ME specifically at all.
Jean, in fact, is a current member of The Education Forum and she can post here anytime she wants. She's been a member since August 22, 2004, as we can see in her profile here.
So she certainly doesn't need me (or anyone else) to serve as a go-between when it comes to posting at this forum.
It's time for DiEugenio to wipe a little egg off of his face now. I had to do that yesterday when I fully admitted I was wrong about the "punch holes" topic. Will Jim do likewise now and retract his wholly inaccurate quote cited above?
JAMES DiEUGENIO SAID:
As they say, this is a distinction without a difference, either you picked it up or she passed it off. .... The main point is, and was, that neither you, nor her, nor McAdams did any review of the evidence before you jumped over here and announced with great fanfare: "Money order debunked!" You could not control yourself, you lost control of your sphincter muscles. And look what came out.
And now you all want us to forget about it like it did not happen.
Sorry, it did. And as I said, this is about the third or fourth time with you. When does a continuous pattern of "errors" become a deliberate attempt to mislead?
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Holy St. Mary! What a beautiful place for a Pot/Kettle icon here! (Somebody get me one--quick!)
Conspiracy theorists have the patent on sending people down garden paths. And they own another patent on sending perfectly innocent people to the figurative gallows based on NOTHING but suspicion, rumor, and gut feeling --- like, say, Ruth Paine, Michael Paine, Linnie Randle, Wesley Frazier, Bob Frazier, Allen Dulles, and M.N. McDonald, among dozens of others connected in some way to the events of November 22, 1963.
Jimmy surely must have changed his middle name to "Irony". How could it possibly be anything else?
JAMES DiEUGENIO SAID:
IMO, he [James R. Gordon] was right when he wanted to kick you off for saying the Single Bullet Theory was inescapable.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Well, James, fortunately for all of us, you aren't steering the ship here at The Education Forum.
JAMES DiEUGENIO SAID:
Yeah, inescapable BS.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
You, Jim, should be very familiar with those two initials -- BS -- what with the fact you believe in every one of these incredibly ridiculous things.
DAVID VON PEIN ALSO SAID:
Warren Commission Document No. 75, Page 668, is an FBI report that says a money order for $21.45 was sent to the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago on March 16, 1963 (next-to-last paragraph).
Sure looks like the Hidell money order entered the federal banking system to me.
JAMES DiEUGENIO SAID:
Just like Bardwell Odum showed Wright and Tomlinson CE 399 and they positively identified it, right?
Give us all a break, OK?
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Yeah, Jim, CD75 is just another lie, right? This one being told by the THREE different Chicago FBI agents who attached their names to that report in CD75 -- Gale T. Johnson, James E. Hanlon, and Philip R. Wanerus.
So there are three more scheming liars for Jimmy to add to his ever-growing list of liars.
And let's not forget about the fact that Lee Harvey Oswald's handwriting is on the money order in question -- the original of which was examined by questioned documents expert Alwyn Cole of the Treasury Department....
MELVIN EISENBERG -- "Mr. Cole, I now hand you an item consisting of a U.S. postal money order in the amount of $21.45, payable to Klein's Sporting Goods, from "A. Hidell, P.O. Box 2915, Dallas, Texas." For the record I will state that this money order was included with the purchase order in Exhibit 773 which has just been identified, and was intended and used as payment for the weapon shipped in response to the purchase order, 773. I ask you, Mr. Cole, whether you have examined this money order for the purpose of determining whether it was prepared by the author of the standards?"
ALWYN COLE -- "Yes, sir."
MR. EISENBERG -- "What was your conclusion, Mr. Cole?"
MR. COLE -- "It is my conclusion that the handwriting on this money order is in the hand of the person who executed the standard writing [i.e., Lee Harvey Oswald]."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Looks like we can add the name of Alwyn Cole to James DiEugenio's list of falsehood tellers. Right, Jim? (Or does Cole already show up as #1,846 on your existing list?)
Also, handwriting expert Joseph McNally (along with others who examined the same documents for the House Select Committee on Assassinations) came to the same conclusion that Alwyn Cole did -- i.e., the money order and all other documents relating to the rifle purchase were written by Lee Harvey Oswald [see McNally testimony at 4 HSCA 355].
And please note that McNally, just like Cole 14 years earlier, examined the original money order, not just a photo or a microfilmed record....
MR. KLEIN -- "Did the panel reach a conclusion with respect to those documents?"
MR. McNALLY -- "They did."
MR. KLEIN -- "What was that conclusion?"
MR. McNALLY -- "That JFK exhibit F-504 and F-509 were written by the same person, again with the caveat. JFK exhibit F-504 is a photo reproduction of a microfilm."
MR. KLEIN -- "The document, which is marked F-509, the money order, is an original document; is it not?"
MR. McNALLY -- "It was; yes."
MR. KLEIN -- "And your conclusion is they were written by the same person who wrote the other documents?"
MR. McNALLY -- "That is right."
------------------
EDIT --- And yet another of the HSCA's handwriting analysts that DiEugenio probably thinks was also telling tall tales is Charles C. Scott, who said the following about the writing on the Postal Money Order (see 8 HSCA 246)....
Click to enlarge:
JAMES DiEUGENIO SAID:
Davey:
I am not talking to you anymore on this issue. OK?
I only did so to show the others how your constellation works: the McAdams, DVP, Davison connection. So they will not be fooled again.
Over and out.
Bye.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Okay, Jimmy.
Ten-Four and Wilco.
One-Adam-12 out.
SANDY LARSEN SAID:
But if it [the Hidell money order] is made with card stock, why is it that the "Mar 12 1963" postal stamp so readily bled through to the back?
The fact that it bled though indicates that the MO we see is actually paper stock, not card stock.
JAMES DiEUGENIO SAID:
Nice point Sandy.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
More stupidity on the part of your bumbling idiotic patsy framers, right Jimmy? They couldn't even get the right "card stock" to mimic a real U.S. Postal Money Order. What a band of goofs those plotters were.
But thank goodness we've got super sleuths like Armstrong, Josephs, Larsen, and DiEugenio on the scene now to figure all this out. Otherwise, Dulles, Ferrie, Shaw, and the stumblebum who used the wrong paper for CE788 would never have been found out and exposed!
SANDY LARSEN SAID:
I just go where the evidence leads me, David. The money order wasn't processed, and probably wasn't even deposited in the bank.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Okay, Sandy. Believe what you want. But I disagree.
But can you give me your opinion as to why the alleged plotters were so incompetent when it came to pretty much everything relating to the alleged "phony" rifle purchase?
E.G.,
>> Wrong paper stock used for the money order.
>> No bank stamps.
>> The rifle order and money order go from Dallas to Chicago in 24 hours, which is an impossibility if we're to believe the conspiracy theorists.*
>> They "shipped" the WRONG RIFLE, per DiEugenio and other CTers (sending "Hidell" a 40-inch Carcano instead of the 36-incher that "Hidell" ordered via the American Rifleman magazine ad). Why did they manufacture that little piece of confusion if the ENTIRE rifle transaction is nothing but a fantasy from the ground up---including ALL of the paperwork?
>> They forgot the proper legal forms for the rifle (which CTers insist should have been included with the rifle shipment; although Jean Davison in the past has made it quite clear, via documentation, that such a legal requirement only applied to HANDGUNS in 1963, not rifles).
* Incredibly, however, a letter that was mailed in January 1952 could go all the way across the country overnight--from California to New York. (Audio below.)
SANDY LARSEN SAID:
Yes, postal money orders do require bank endorsements!
The Hidell money order, supposedly used to pay for the Carcano rifle, which supposedly was used by Lee Harvey Oswald to shoot President Kennedy, has no bank endorsements or Federal Reserve Bank stamps.
This proves that the money order was never processed, and this is strong evidence that Oswald was being framed as JFK's killer.
Lone nutters claim or believe that no endorsements or FRB [Federal Reserve Bank] stamps are needed for postal money orders. They want to see the proof. Well...
Here's the proof:.
From the Code of Federal Regulations, 39 CFR 762.29c ....
"Endorsement of disbursement postal money orders drawn in favor of financial organizations:
All Disbursement Postal Money Orders drawn in favor of financial organizations, for credit to the accounts of persons designating payment so to be made, shall be endorsed in the name of the financial organization as payee in the usual manner."
Source: http://books.google.com/id=CFR+Title+39+762.29
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Sandy,
All of that legalistic language can be quite confusing as to exact meaning. But I'm not sure that the information in "Paragraph C" of those money order regulations really means what you think it means.
The word "drawn" has me confused. The Hidell money order was "drawn" in favor of Klein's Sporting Goods, was it not? It wasn't "drawn" "in favor of [a] financial organization".
And Paragraph C says that, in effect, the financial organization is the "payee". Wouldn't that mean the name of the financial institution would also be on the "PAY TO" line on the front of the money order too?
The language has me scratching my head as to WHO IS WHO there.
~shrug~
But upon reading the page you linked to a little further, Paragraph B is quite interesting. That section seems to imply that NO endorsement IS an acceptable way to handle a U.S. Postal Money Order (emphasis is mine)....
--- QUOTE: ---
762.29b --- Endorsement of disbursement postal money orders by a financial organization under the payee's authorization....
When a Disbursement Postal Money Order is credited by a financial organization to the payee's account under his authorization, the financial organization may use an endorsement substantially as follows:
Credit to the account of the within-named payee in accordance with payee's or payees' instructions. Absence of endorsement guaranteed.
A financial organization using this form of endorsement shall be deemed to guarantee to all subsequent endorsers and to the Postal Service that it is acting as an attorney in fact for the payee or payees, under his or their authorization.
--- END QUOTE ---
Now, does the above merely mean that even if Klein's had not put their "Pay to the order of First National Bank" stamp on the back of the M.O., that First National would still have credited it to Klein's account? Or does "Absence of endorsement guaranteed" mean something else? ~shrug~
However, the words "to all subsequent endorsers" would seem to imply that it's likely that a money order WILL later be endorsed by other institutions.
But I'm still confused a bit by the language.
EDIT/ADDENDUM ---
And I also just now noticed that the heading for everything that follows in Section 762.29 of those postal regulations cited by Sandy Larsen is this heading:
"Endorsement of disbursement postal money orders by payees."
The key words there are "BY PAYEES".
Well, in the case of the subject Hidell postal money order, the BANKS certainly aren't the PAYEES. The "payee" is Klein's Sporting Goods of Chicago, Illinois. It was Klein's getting PAID the $21.45, not First National Bank or the Federal Reserve Bank.
So I think that heading of that regulation--alone--makes Sandy's assumption that the BANKS were required to endorse U.S. Postal Money Orders to be an unproven assumption based on Postal Regulation 762.29.
As a side note, let me state that I appreciate the tremendous amount of work and effort and Google searching that Sandy Larsen has done in the last few days to try and nail down details relating to this controversial "Money Order" topic. Excellent work, Sandy.
JON G. TIDD SAID ALL THIS.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Thank you, Jon, for all of that information. Very helpful indeed.
So I guess I was incorrect about Klein's being the ONLY "payee" as far as the Hidell money order is concerned. I accept your explanation regarding First National Bank becoming the "second payee" after Klein's endorsed the back of the money order. Although it still seems a bit strange to me to have the bank considered a "payee", since it's really KLEIN'S money, regardless of where it's being stored. But, oh well. ~shrug~
But, it would appear by your first comment in your post linked above ("DVP is correct here") that Sandy's cited example of Regulation 762.29c does NOT mean what Sandy thinks it does. Correct?
In other words, since that word "drawn" is included in that paragraph Sandy cited, that would mean that any money order "drawn in favor of financial organizations" (quote from 762.29c) would have had the financial organization's name shown on the front of the money order next to the "PAY TO" line, correct?
But we know the Hidell money order has "Klein's Sporting Goods" written on the "PAY TO" line.
So, Jon, is it back to the drawing board for the conspiracy theorists on this matter or not? I'm still perplexed by some of the language.
DAVID VON PEIN LATER SAID:
Addendum....
Another thought I had after reading this paragraph yet again:
"All Disbursement Postal Money Orders drawn in favor of financial organizations, for credit to the accounts of persons designating payment so to be made, shall be endorsed in the name of the financial organization as payee in the usual manner."
Even if I am 100% wrong and completely off my rocker about what I said in
Post #11 and Post #47 in this [Education Forum] thread, I still don't think Sandy Larsen has a leg to stand on.
Why?
Because even if the postal regulation cited above is referring only to markings that would appear on the back side of a U.S. Postal Money Order (versus showing up after the "PAY TO" line on the front of the M.O.)....so what?
Under those circumstances, that regulation cited by Sandy would be referring to an endorsement that we all KNOW is already present on the Hidell money order, which is the Klein's stamp on the back endorsing the M.O. over to First National Bank "for credit to the accounts of persons designating payment so to be made" [citing the 762.29 postal regulation] -- with First National then becoming the second "payee".
So there's nothing new or groundbreaking there at all, regardless of how that word "drawn" is interpreted.
DAVID VON PEIN LATER SAID:
Another "Money Order" addendum:
Now we have an incredible find made by Tom Scully (which Scully posted at the aaj forum HERE on November 13, 2015). It's a PDF file of a congressional hearing regarding the post office and civil service that took place on March 30, 1960, three years before Oswald purchased his money order in Dallas.
Here's the relevant passage from that 1960 hearing (the complete PDF file is linked below):
"We use the machine method. The Federal Reserve bank punches the amount as it appears on them [money orders], and as it was cleared to them by the cashing bank. They punch that amount into the money order so if a figure is misread or if a figure has been raised it is punched for the erroneous amount by the Federal Reserve bank. When it comes out through our money order center, we process it through a tabulating machine which only reads the hole that is in there." -- J. Harold Marks; Finance Officer, Bureau of Finance, Post Office Department (March 30, 1960)
SOURCE:
http://bulk.resource.org/gao.gov
RELEVANT PAGE:
http://1.bp.blogspot.com
So, perhaps Brian Castle and Mike Giampaolo and Jean Davison weren't wrong after all. It looks like at least SOME of the punch holes in U.S. Postal Money Orders issued prior to 1963 WERE, indeed, placed there by the Federal Reserve Bank as part of the processing of those money orders.
Whether or not this exact same system was in place when Oswald's money order was purchased in Dallas, Texas, in March 1963, I really do not know. But it's an interesting piece of information nonetheless.
Thank you, Tom Scully.
As a side note to all this --- A rather amazing coincidence exists concerning the above testimony of Mr. J. Harold Marks of the Post Office Department. It just so happens that Mr. Marks is the very same person who took physical possession of the Hidell postal money order in Virginia on November 23, 1963, shortly after JFK's assassination (as confirmed in Commission Document 87).
Small world, isn't it?
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
And yet another addendum (~sigh~)....
John Mytton at Duncan MacRae's JFK Assassination Forum provided me with THIS DOCUMENT from the year 1951 (also pictured below) relating to the manner in which U.S. Postal Money Orders were handled at that time.
That 1951 information is probably not very useful or valid in most respects when compared to the procedures that were in place when Oswald bought his money order in 1963, but the '51 document does prove one thing (as does the information from 1960 provided earlier by Tom Scully) -- it proves that the Federal Reserve Bank definitely DID utilize a method of mechanically punching holes in postal money orders (at least as of 1951 and then, via Scully's info, 1960 as well).
But the precise method by which U.S. Postal Money Orders were handled, processed, and marked (or punched) by the Federal Reserve Bank, circa 1963, has not yet been established with any certainty.
My thanks to John Mytton for providing this 1951 postal document:
TIM NICKERSON SAID:
That's just more concise, easy to understand confirmation that the money order had to have been cashed. The legalese stuff that I've been reading lately just gives me a headache.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Yeah, I've got a headache from it too.
But the TWO most important things (IMO) that establish the 1963 Hidell money order as being a legitimate and valid document are: Oswald's writing on the money order (as determined by multiple handwriting analysts in 1964 and 1978 -- Cole, Cadigan, McNally, and Scott) and the Klein's "Pay To The Order Of First National Bank" stamp on the back of the money order.
So we KNOW from the above two things that Oswald handled and wrote on that money order and Klein's Sporting Goods handled and stamped the same document.
And the above two things are true, IMO, even without any other bank markings present on the document.
Many CTers, naturally, disagree. They think (evidently) that somebody faked perfect "Oswald" handwriting (good enough to fool those four handwriting examiners who looked at the ORIGINAL money order in 1964 and 1978) AND the skillful plotters were able to somehow steal a rubber "Pay To The Order" stamp owned by Klein's Sporting Goods of Chicago, Illinois. (Either that, or the conspirators were able to somehow convince a representative from Klein's to jump on board the plotters' crowded "Let's Frame Oswald" cruise ship.)
As we can see, the "conspiracy" options involved in making that CE788 money order a fake document are much harder to swallow than to just believe that it is a genuine document that wasn't stamped by anybody after Klein's stamped it (possibly because no such additional stamps or endorsements were required to be placed on it).
TOM SCULLY SAID:
The purpose of Federal Reserve Bank clearing of postal money orders had
been different for Dallas region Post Office issued money orders before
January 5, 1963, than it was after.
The FRB was paid an annual fee by the Postal Money Order Service to key-punch the face amount of each money order, into the money order, AKA the blue tinted tabulator card. After this operation, the money order card with its freshly key punched holes was returned to the automated reading/sorting process and the result was that a paper tape of the day's FRB money order processing was sent along with the key-punched money order cards to the national money order audit center in Kansas City.
The paper tape contained machine readable data reconciling the amount owed to each bank in the federal reserve banking system for reimbursement by the Postmaster's money order account at the GAO. The pre-punched rectangular serial number machine code on each money order card determined the location of where money order had been issued and the FRB key-punched round holes determined the amount each issuing post office owed to the GAO account.
When the FRB sent the day's money order processing to Kansas City with the reconciliation data tape, the K.C. money order office batch processed the 12 regional packets of money orders the FRB processing had organized.
For Dallas-issued money orders sold beginning 5 Jan., 1963, a new process sequence began. These new yellow-tinted money orders came out of the new P.O. sales counter Friden M.O. machines with the face amount both printed and key punched into the money order AKA tabulator cards.
When they reached the FRB to be processed, they could be handled much more quickly and cheaply because no operator any longer had to set each money order in a viewer and key-punch machine code holes corresponding with the face amount.
The Postal money order service was able to cease paying the FRB in excess of $600,000 annually for the former key-punch service. The new style money orders were processed on new, faster machines and sorted and sent to a new postal audit/data center with the FRB reconciliation data recorded on magnetic tape.
Unlike a check, a postal money order is a non-negotiable instrument and is considered void if endorsed more than once.
[...]
The $21.45 postal money order allegedly sold in Dallas in March, 1963 was of a new type destined for a new processing method by the FRB on new processing machinery and then it was routed to a new postal audit center in Washington where the US goverment and US Post Office investigators claimed it was located and retrieved and David noticed the familiar name of the postal official who retrieved it, J. Harold Marks, the man in the 1960 congressional hearing describing the FRB key-punching of postal money order face amounts.
JIM HARGROVE SAID:
Tom....
The subject of this thread [at the Deep Politics Forum] is "The deposit slip that was never stamped by the bank."
[...]
The discussion currently going on at three different forums concerns DVP's attempt to discredit John Armstrong's discovery a few years ago that the infamous "Hidell" money order was never processed, cashed, or cancelled by a bank or other financial institution. Von Pein and [Greg] Parker have tried to suggest that some of the holes punched into the card actually represented cancellation by other financial institutions. This is clearly not true. The holes indicate the serial number of the money order and the exact amount of the face value, and nothing else.
I showed other Oswald financial documents from c. 1963 to show how receiving (cashing) institutions stamped legitimate financial instruments. Your attempt to change the focus of the discussion to how the existing serial number fit into the probable date of issuance of the M.O. itself is irrelevant to the question of whether this document was cashed or deposited into a bank--any bank or any other financial institution. It wasn't.
TOM SCULLY SAID:
With all due respect, Jim, the more time and effort I put into doing my own research in reaction to your numerous presentations, the more I understand what you do not know and do not care to know.
I've become convinced you have no idea what the specific FRB processing/clearing was for the yellow-tinted, tabulation card, aka the money order in the amount of $21.45.
I have established the fact that the money order form sold at Dallas until close of business on 4 January, 1963, was processed by FRB and that processing included an FRB processing center operator manually reading the amount displayed on each blue-tinted money order and manually key punching holes into the money order card that denoted the amount the operator had manually read.
So that is actual documentation of the FRB marking the blue-tinted money order tabulator card during processing, but the money order in the amount of $21.45 was on a yellow-tinted tabulator card with holes corresponding to the face amount already key punched in as it was created by the new Friden money order machine.
No documentation as to how the accepting bank or the FRB processing actually did or did not mark the new yellow-tinted, post-January 4, 1963 money orders sold at the Dallas P.O. has actually been presented.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Thank you, Tom.
The work you've put into researching this "Money Order" topic is staggering. Much appreciated.
GIL JESUS SAID:
Not only did the FNB [First National Bank] of Chicago not stamp money orders, I guess they never stamped deposit slips as well.
The alleged Klein's deposit slip of 3/13/63 (Waldman 10) has a date of 2/15/63 and is not stamped by the First National Bank of Chicago, which it should have been had it been deposited.
JIM HARGROVE SAID:
Gil,
Mega thanks for pointing out that the First National Bank of Chicago deposit slip for the alleged Klein's money order wasn't stamped or processed either, just like the money order itself. I had noticed other problems with the so-called deposit slip, but not that. This whole thing is ludicrous.
The WC's Waldman Exhibit #10 shows that the alleged deposit slip for the alleged money order for the alleged Hidell purchase of the rifle was dated 2/15/63, A MONTH BEFORE THE MONEY ORDER WAS ALLEGEDLY ISSUED!! Deposited nearly a month before it was issued??
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
I just realized today [November 14, 2015] that the incorrect date on the "Extra Copy" of the deposit ticket that Klein's filled out in March 1963 (pictured at the bottom of Waldman Exhibit No. 10) has only one inaccurate number printed on it, instead of two slipped digits.
I had previously remarked to someone at one of the JFK forums in the last few days that TWO digits were written incorrectly on that deposit slip (the "2" and the "15" in the date), but when we look at Warren Commission Document 75, which is an FBI FD-302 report filed in November 1963 by three Chicago FBI agents, we see that the deposit that Klein's made which included the Hidell postal money order was actually not deposited on March 13, 1963, which was the day Klein's received the order form and money order from Oswald/Hidell in the mail.
Per CD75, the deposit with the Hidell money order in it was sent by Klein's to First National Bank of Chicago on Friday, March 15, 1963, two days after Klein's received the Hidell order for the rifle. Here's what it says in CD75:
"A deposit made with the bank on March 15, 1963, by Klein's Sporting Goods, Inc., 4540 West Madison Street, Chicago, Illinois, in the amount of $13,827.98, included two items in the amount of $21.45, and was processed by the bank on March 16, 1963." -- CD75, Page 668, Paragraph 4
So that means that only the "2" in the date—which is written as "2/15/63" on the extra copy of the deposit ticket—is inaccurate. The rest of the numbers are correct (per the info found in CD75). The 2 (February) should, of course, really be a 3 (March). Someone at Klein's must have still thought it was February when they wrote out that deposit slip on March 15th.
But the key to knowing that the incorrect date on the deposit ticket was just a case of an innocent slipped digit is the fact that the total amount shown on the "2/15/63" deposit slip is identical to the penny when compared with the detailed summary sheet of Klein's 3/13/63 sales, which is also pictured in Waldman Exhibit 10. Both items show a total of $13,827.98.
And a probable reason for why that "extra copy" was not stamped or marked in any way by the bank is because that piece of paper was probably never sent to the bank by Klein's. It's an "extra copy" that might have been retained by Klein's for its records only, and might not have gone to the bank with the original copy of the deposit ticket.
But even if that extra copy did make it to the bank, it's also quite possible that only the FIRST (primary) copy of the deposit ticket gets stamped or marked by the bank. In the alternate scenario where ALL copies of the deposit record do get sent to First National by Klein's, the top copy is likely the only one that stays with the bank (and is marked or stamped), while any carbon copies get sent back to Klein's unmarked.
Another possibility is: the extra copy of the deposit ticket was stamped by the bank—but on the BACK side of the deposit slip, instead of on the front of it.
HERE is an example to prove my point about that (also shown below). It's a deposit ticket that I filled out and sent to my bank in October 2015. After processing the deposit, the bank stamped only the back of the deposit slip, not the front.
Now, yes, I'm providing an example from 2015 here, and not from 1963. But I think it's quite possible (even likely) that the basic procedure at most banks for stamping deposit tickets hasn't changed since 1963.
JEAN DAVISON SAID:
Wow, Tom.
"The Federal Reserve Bank punches the amount as it appears on them....They punch this amount into the money order."
So is this, then, evidence of the long-missing "bank stamp" showing that the money order was cashed?
Should we all shout "Eureka"?
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
No, not quite, Jean.
As Tom Scully explained, the Federal Reserve Bank stopped punching the round holes in the money orders as of January 5, 1963, two months before Lee Oswald purchased the famous "CE788" money order.
So the punch holes in OSWALD'S money order were likely placed there by the post office at the time Oswald bought the M.O. (see Tom's earlier link from the 1962 Palm Beach newspaper article, linked again here).
But this remark Tom made is quite interesting, isn't it?....
"Unlike a check, a postal money order is a non-negotiable instrument and is considered void if endorsed more than once." -- Tom Scully
BTW / FYI....
Tim Nickerson at John McAdams' forum recently posted a link to this high-quality color version of Lee Harvey Oswald's money order that I had never seen before.*
Now, if Tom Scully is correct and if the Hidell/Oswald money order was part of the "new batch" of money orders that were punched at the post office instead of at the Federal Reserve Bank, then that money order linked above should be yellow-tinted. The old style money orders had a blue tint, says Tom.
But I can't really tell what (if any) "tint" that color version of the money order possesses. Is it yellowish? Could be. (I'm partially color blind, so I'm at a disadvantage when it comes to determining colors.)
~shrug~
* And I'm assuming that the color photo of the Hidell money order pictured below [which originated on the Corbis website] is not merely a "colorized" version that was taken from a black-and-white photo of the document (which, I suppose, is a possibility).
JOHN McADAMS SAID:
That looks to me like the real thing. Admittedly, I've never seen the original in the Archives, but I *have* seen plenty of money orders of that vintage, and this looks real.
Add to that the fact that I can't see why Corbis would colorize it. Even if they had no scruples about that, why go to the trouble of doing that for one of the millions of images on their site?
It's not IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE or MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET. (And of course, colorizing those was a terrible idea.)
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Thanks, John. I agree. I think it's a "real" color version of the money order too.
But do you see a YELLOWISH tint there? I really can't tell. But it does look a little "Yellowish" to my partly color-blind orbs.
JOHN McADAMS SAID:
Paper tends to yellow over time. All the Warren Commission Exhibit photos are in black and white. This original document was probably photographed at the Archives in (perhaps) the 1990s.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Yes, that's certainly true about paper turning yellow over a period of time.
However, I have in my baseball collection hundreds of sheets of regular, ordinary (cheap!) notebook paper that I would use as homemade "scorecards" to score and track hundreds of Cincinnati Reds baseball games dating back 40 years ago (to 1975), and yet there's not a hint of yellow anywhere to be found on those old papers. In fact, I even recall saying to myself: "I wonder how these old papers can look so new and yellow-free?"
But, maybe it takes more than FIFTY years (or sixty?) for ordinary notebook paper from K-Mart to start yellowing (if it ever does turn yellow at all).
~shrug time~
DAVID VON PEIN ALSO SAID:
Another "BTW / FYI"....
This 11/23/63 video clip from Chicago television station WBKB-TV is quite interesting to see (mostly because it's so rare). It deals with Oswald's rifle purchase from Klein's Sporting Goods, which was, of course, located in that same city of Chicago. Future ABC news anchor Frank Reynolds is at the WBKB news desk for this clip:
JAMES DiEUGENIO SAID:
The key punch holes are irrelevant to the issue at hand.
Namely, did the money order pass through the system[?]
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
As mentioned earlier in this marathon discussion by both Jean Davison and myself, the Chicago FBI report seen in Commission Document No. 75 indicates that a "Postal Money Order" in the amount of $21.45 was definitely sent to the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago by the First National Bank of Chicago on Saturday, March 16, 1963 (next-to-last paragraph of CD75, p.668).
It sure as heck looks like the Hidell money order passed through the system to me.
At the very least, that 11/23/63 FBI report in CD75 verifies that FIRST NATIONAL BANK handed off the $21.45 "Postal Money Order" to the FEDERAL RESERVE BANK in Chicago on 3/16/63, which was one day after Klein's deposited the money order into its account on March 15th (also verified in CD75).
Is Vice President Robert Wilmouth of the First National Bank of Chicago now on your list of liars, Mr. DiEugenio?
JAMES DiEUGENIO SAID:
John Armstrong will be posting on this soon.
Armstrong knows more about this issue than any person alive. Or dead.
What silliness DVP produced, walking around in the dark groping here and there, anywhere. But never doing his own original research.
Armstrong has digested the whole history of money orders in America.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Now, if only Armstrong can somehow find a way to conveniently explain away how on Earth the Klein's endorsement stamp AND Lee Harvey Oswald's own handwriting (which was verified as Oswald's by at least 4 different handwriting analysts) managed to attach themselves to the CE788 Hidell U.S. Postal Money Order, then Mr. Armstrong will be home free on this issue.
Until then, I'm afraid Armstrong is fighting an uphill battle.
Oh, I'm sure Armstrong has treated the world to his own speculative and lame-ass "Everything's Fake" excuse to try and explain how the Klein's stamp and Oswald's writing got onto CE788, but it would sure be nice to see some PROOF that those two very important things that exist on the money order were faked by evil conspirators. Any chance we'll ever see any proof of that, Jim?
And the lack of a bank stamp on the back of the money order does not prove that either the Klein's stamp or Lee Oswald's handwriting are fraudulent markings on Commission Exhibit 788.
LANCE PAYETTE SAID:
I admittedly skipped the Postal Money Order class in law school, but there is only one "payee" — here, Klein's. The money order was "drawn in favor of" Klein's.
Klein's, as the payee, then "endorses" the money order. Klein's deposits the money order in its bank, which is a member of the Federal Reserve system; it is the "depository bank", but neither a payee nor an endorser. (If Klein's had endorsed the money over to some third party, that party would have become an "additional endorser" and could have deposited the money in its bank.)
Klein's bank as the depository bank credits the money order to Klein's account, as indicated by the stamp on the back. The stamp is the depository bank's guarantee to the Federal Reserve bank that Klein's endorsement is genuine and the money order has been paid. (If the money order had been endorsed by Klein's over to a third party which deposited it in its bank, that bank's stamp would have guaranteed the genuineness of all endorsements, including Klein's.)
Klein's bank, as the "presenting bank," then forwards the money order to the Federal Reserve bank, which credits the presenting bank and sends the money order to the Postal Service.
I will defer to anyone who is more knowledgeable, but this is how I read the current regulations and understand negotiable instruments to work.
LANCE PAYETTE LATER SAID:
The number of money orders has been declining, but the volume processed through the Federal Reserve in 1963 was gigantic. A commercial customer like Klein's typically would have been making a bulk deposit of items to its account (cash, checks, money orders), each item requiring an endorsement stamped with the language found on the money order.
After that, the bank's transmittal to the Federal Reserve bank would have been a bulk transmittal. The Federal Reserve bank's transmittal to the Post Office would likewise have been a bulk transmittal.
Are there piles of 1963 (or 1964 or 1965) money orders bearing some evidence of processing different from the Klein's M.O. (perhaps there are—I'm sincerely asking)? If there are not, I'm not seeing anything inherently suspicious about the fact that the Klein's money order bears no stamp (apart from Klein's deposit stamp) indicating processing by the depository bank or the Federal Reserve.
Surely the definitive question has to be, "Is there something different about this money order versus the tens of millions of other ones deposited in local banks and processed through the Federal Reserve in 1963 or thereabouts?"
If the answer is yes — OK, that's extremely noteworthy.
Edit:
I just read through a very extensive paper on this at CTKA. Although the author insists the individual money order "should" bear evidence of processing by the First National Bank of Chicago and the Federal Reserve Bank, he really provides nothing indicating why it "should."
Although he says the Klein's money order is very different from others he examined, he provides no examples of the others. I would love to see at least one example of a 1963-era money order bearing evidence of depository bank or Federal Reserve processing.
It may be noteworthy that money orders really aren't considered "negotiable instruments" in the same way as checks and that the depository banks and Federal Reserve really perform more of a "collection agent" function — which could (but may not) be important to why there is none of the usual evidence of processing.
Further edit:
I have tremendous respect for the work John Armstrong has done. However, he states flatly (on the H&L site [HERE]):
[Quote:]
"US Postal money orders are normally deposited or cashed at a bank or financial institution. They are date stamped, endorsed by the bank, routed thru a Federal Reserve bank where they are endorsed and date stamped a second time, and then sent to the postal money order center in either Kansas City or Arlington, VA. where they are endorsed and date stamped for a third time and placed in storage. But the $21.45 money order that was allegedly used to pay for "C2766" did not have a single bank endorsement or date stamp by any bank or by a postal money order center--this $21.45 money order was most certainly never deposited to a bank or any financial institution."
[End Quote.]
I did some viewing of the relevant portions of his collection at Baylor University and didn't find anything to substantiate the above (I certainly could have missed it).
Subject to being corrected, my belief is that the stamp we do see on the back of the Klein's money order would be all we would expect to see if the m.o. had in fact been processed through the system.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Lance,
Thank you for your recent posts concerning this "money order" topic.
I'm just pleased to see that there is at least ONE other person on the planet (besides myself) who thinks that the only real "payee" involved in the CE788 Hidell money order is Klein's Sporting Goods.
Repeating what I said four days ago....
"All of that legalistic language can be quite confusing as to exact meaning. But I'm not sure that the information in "Paragraph C" of those money order regulations really means what you [Sandy Larsen] think it means.
The word "drawn" has me confused. The Hidell money order was "drawn" in favor of Klein's Sporting Goods, was it not? It wasn't "drawn" "in favor of [a] financial organization".
And Paragraph C says that, in effect, the financial organization is the "payee". Wouldn't that mean the name of the financial institution would also be on the "PAY TO" line on the front of the money order too?
The language has me scratching my head as to WHO IS WHO there.
~shrug~
[...]
And I also just now noticed that the heading for everything that follows in Section 762.29 of those postal regulations cited by Sandy Larsen is this heading:
"Endorsement of disbursement postal money orders by payees."
The key words there are "BY PAYEES".
Well, in the case of the subject Hidell postal money order, the BANKS certainly aren't the PAYEES. The "payee" is Klein's Sporting Goods of Chicago, Illinois. It was Klein's getting PAID the $21.45, not First National Bank or the Federal Reserve Bank.
So I think that heading of that regulation--alone--makes Sandy's assumption that the BANKS were required to endorse U.S. Postal Money Orders to be an unproven assumption based on Postal Regulation 762.29."
-- DVP; November 12, 2015
[End Quote.]
----------------
The literal definition of the word "payee" is....
PAYEE (noun) ---
1. (Banking & Finance): The person to whom a cheque, money order, etc, is made out.
2. (Banking & Finance): A person to whom money is paid or due.
Also....
PAYEE (noun) ---
A person to whom a check, money, etc., is payable.
-- TheFreeDictionary.com
----------------
It seems to me that the BANK doesn't qualify under any of those above-referenced definitions. The Hidell money order wasn't made payable to "First National Bank". And the bank can't spend the money that has just been deposited into a customer's account. Only the "payee" (Klein's) has that right. The bank is just storing and holding the money for Klein's. They really aren't being "paid" (in the literal sense of the word, because it's not First National's money).
From my (admittedly) "layman" point-of-view on this, all of what I just said above makes sense to me.
But on the other hand, I will readily admit I could be wrong when it comes to any LEGAL or TECHNICAL meaning of the term "payee" in conjunction with official postal regulations and the language utilized therein.
Some other people in this discussion have said that once Klein's stamped the Hidell money order with its "Pay To The Order Of First National Bank" stamp, that automatically makes First National Bank the second "payee" of the money order....
"Klein's was the original payee. Its endorsement stamp made the Chicago bank the second payee. The basic rule here is that any time a check is transferred (negotiated) by a "pay to" type of endorsement, the transferee is a payee."
-- Jon Tidd; November 12, 2015
But as I then said (when responding to Jon's post)....
"It still seems a bit strange to me to have the bank considered a "payee", since it's really KLEIN'S money, regardless of where it's being stored. But, oh well. ~shrug~" -- DVP; November 12, 2015
Anyway, thank you, Lance, for your contributions to this discussion regarding this rather confusing subject.
LANCE PAYETTE SAID:
I've been a lawyer for 35 years, and there is just no way the bank is the payee—unless you get a money order to pay your mortgage or car loan from the bank, and it actually is the payee.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Thank you, Lance.
TIM NICKERSON SAID:
That money order sold on E-BAY on June 21, 2014 as a stamp collection item [is the top picture below]. The money order itself was never cashed. Compare that money order with the Klein's rifle money order:
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Thanks, Tim.
Perhaps that number that you've highlighted at the top of the Hidell money order — 138 4159796 — does mean something as far as "processing" is concerned. Could the Federal Reserve Bank have stamped that number on the money order in Chicago? Or maybe after it got to Washington? I don't know. But it obviously got there somehow. And it's not part of the money order's serial number. So what does that ten-digit number mean? And who stamped it there? And when?
But I have a feeling that conspiracists like John Armstrong and Jim DiEugenio will be doing cartwheels due to the fact that the yellow uncashed money order, dated September 11, 1963, has a serial number that is 1.4 billion numbers LOWER than the Hidell money order, even though the September money order was stamped (and, I would assume, purchased by someone) six months AFTER Lee Harvey Oswald purchased the CE788 money order in March.
That huge difference in the serial numbers will likely cause CTers to cast still more doubt on the legitimacy of Oswald's money order.
LANCE PAYETTE SAID:
Regarding 138 4159796, I have been able to find nothing. But my guess would be it is evidence of processing — perhaps an identification number of some sort placed by the Federal Reserve.
As I dive into this issue, I continue to be struck by the fact that the experts continue to assure us there "should be" evidence of processing but never seem to provide examples; they just assume there "should be."
Even the representatives from the First [National] Bank of Chicago and the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago did not, as far as I can tell, suggest there should be indicators of processing. They just described the route the money order would have taken.
How is it possible that no one in the past decades has located someone who could definitively say, "This was the process in 1963, this is what should be on a processed money order, and this is what 138 4159796 means"?
Does it seem likely that if someone were going to dummy-up a money order like this in connection with the assassination of a President, they would overlook the indications of processing that "should be" there?
Even as a CT of sorts, I'm always troubled by the fact that the supposed conspirators are idiots when this best fits the theory and geniuses when that best fits the theory.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
I couldn't find anything on the "138 4159796" number either. I searched Google Books and also the regular Google.com in the hopes that maybe I could determine whether or not the "138" portion of that 10-digit number could be some kind of "prefix" that would indicate the branch or the location of, say, a Federal Reserve Bank or some local bank (like First National in Chicago). But I came up empty (as I really expected to).
However, I'm still wondering about the "138" portion of that number, because it is set apart from the seven digits that come after it. Which makes me think the "138" could possibly represent a three-digit code for "Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago", or something along those lines.
I'm back to ~shrugging~ again. But, as I said before, somebody stamped that 10-digit number at the top of the Hidell money order. The question is: Who?
DAVID VON PEIN LATER SAID:
Just in case anybody wants to see another yellow U.S. Postal Money Order to compare with the Hidell M.O. and the previously posted yellow M.O. dated 9/11/63, here's an uncashed money order issued in Deer Trail, Colorado, on
May 17, 1966, which bears a serial number that is 5.2 billion numbers higher than the number on the Oswald/Hidell money order.
And, again, like the 9/11/63 M.O., this uncashed one from 1966 also shows no stamped number in the top left corner. An odd thing I noticed about this particular money order is the fact that the serial number stamped on the stub doesn't match the serial number on the M.O. itself. They're five numbers apart, which is quite strange:
LANCE PAYETTE SAID:
This may solve the ten digits at the top of the Klein's money order. It appears that they are the "File Locator Number" placed by the Treasury Department, which would seemingly be a pretty definite indication that the money order was processed.
I found on the website of the Computer History Museum a 1966 paper entitled "The Check Payment and Reconciliation Program of the U.S. Treasury: Present Status and Future Prospects" by George F. Stickney of the Treasury Department. It can be located here:
http://computer.org/csdl/proceedings/afips/1966/....pdf
Five pages into the paper (page 483), the author explains what a "File Locator Number" is and provides a specimen Treasury check with the File Locator Number highlighted. The digits and location appear to be identical to the Klein's money order.
The article explains that the File Locator Number "may be viewed as the second serial number" and is added to each item as the final step of the card-to-tape conversion process. The author describes it as a hugely significant innovation that allows Treasury to handle each item only once, as opposed to the previous 15-20 times. (Don't be misled by his reference to the "new" system — he is talking about the "new" system adopted in 1957.) Later in the article (page 494), he says that the procedures for postal money orders are "quite similar."
I also found a February 1963 article in Computer and Automation — [HERE] — (see page 42) for the IBM 1420 bank transit system which stated that the machine would process 1600 checks or 1900 postal money orders per minute and would also "imprint the bank's endorsement during processing with no reduction in speed." I couldn't find a manual for the 1420, but I did find the following for a competitive machine manufactured by GE:
[Quote On:]
"Endorser - prints a 3/4 inch by 1 3/4 inch stamp in one of nine different locations on the back of each check passed through the Document Handler, without reducing the input speed. The three horizontal positions of the endorsing stamp can be changed by the operator. The endorsement stamp contains six items:
1. Bank transit number, 2. Date (operator changeable - no tools), 3. Name of bank, 4. City and state, 5. Pay any bank P.E.G., 6. Six variable digit positions (0 - 9, operator changeable, no tools required)"
[End Quote.]
So now we have the mystery that the Klein's money order appears to have no bank endorsement but does appear to have a File Locator Number that would be added only after the money order had found its way to its final destination at the Treasury Department.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
The number of extremely old documents available on the Internet is incredible. While searching for stuff relating to this "Money Order" topic the other day, I actually came across a 102-year-old document of more than 700 pages, "Postal Laws and Regulations of the United States of America; Edition of 1913".
So I guess it's possible to find almost anything online, even if it's 102 years old.
Here's a photo of the sample check which appears on page 483 of the 1966 PDF document Lance provided above, indicating where on a processed check the "File Locator Numbers" are found. And it does, indeed, match the Klein's/Hidell money order exactly, with respect to the number of digits (10) and the format/placement of those digits (3 numbers, then a space, followed by 7 additional numbers)....
And here's an excerpt from the 1966 PDF with more information about the "File Locator Numbers". The key words here are: "The file locator number...is printed on each paid check..."
Emphasizing these words again -- "Each PAID check..."
The check has, therefore, been PAID already before a File Locator Number is added to the check. And as Lance alluded to earlier, U.S. Postal Money Orders were likely being handled in a "similar" fashion to checks at the time.
Thank you, Lance Payette, for what must have been hours of tedious Google searching in an effort to dig up that banking information.
PAUL ERNST SAID:
And when was the above system introduced, which year David?
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
It's from a 1966 document. But the 10-digit number is also seen on the Hidell M.O. from 1963. Same formatting....three digits, a space, then seven more numbers.
Are you saying that the identical formatting for that number meant something OTHER than the "File Locator Number" discussed in that 1966 PDF document that Lance posted earlier?
Gee, there's an amazing coincidence, huh?
Plus, Lance made this comment about the "new" system discussed in the 1966 document....
"Don't be misled by his reference to the "new" system — he is talking about the "new" system adopted in 1957. Later in the article (page 494), he says that the procedures for postal money orders are "quite similar." " -- Lance Payette
PAUL ERNST SAID:
David, we are talking here about BANK CHECKS and not a MO.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
From the same 1966 PDF document Lance provided....
And this excerpt below—from that same 1966 PDF file—pretty much indicates that the entire 1966 document is talking about procedures that began ten years earlier, in Fiscal 1957....
PAUL ERNST SAID:
And what about the question [regarding the first three digits stamped at the top-left of the Hidell money order] --- 138 = Dallas???
Where can I find that back?
I found something about postal zones...but not about that 138 number = DALLAS?
Can you help me out?
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
No, I can't. I tried searching the "138" prefix all day yesterday (in the hopes that something might pop up to indicate that "138" did, indeed, mean something specifically), but I had no luck in finding any info on it. After about 1,000 Google searches, I tossed in the towel.
But maybe you'll have better luck. Or maybe Lance Payette or Sandy Larsen or Tom Scully have some kind of "magic Google Search touch" that enables them to dig out long-forgotten, decades-old PDF documents regarding very old 1960s and 1950s U.S. postal procedures.
All three of them seem to have hit paydirt of one kind or another with respect to this topic of the money order. Who knows what might turn up next. ~shrug~
TIM NICKERSON SAID:
David,
According to that 1966 document, the Treasury Department began converting the money order operation to the electronic system in June 1962.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
What page number of the '66 document, Tim? I want to capture it.
And that "June 1962" date is interesting, indeed, because it's the exact same month when the new yellow-tinted money orders were being introduced, per the Palm Beach newspaper article discovered recently by Tom Scully.
TIM NICKERSON SAID:
Page 498.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Thank you. I see it now. (See image below.)
JAMES DiEUGENIO SAID:
Lance:
Just out of curiosity, how long have you been investigating this case?
I say that because your urge to find closure on this issue, with conclusions that to most people would seem jerry built, strikes me as being rather odd for any kind of person who is very familiar with this case. Also, your lack of any interviews or documentary research into the provenance of the money order is also puzzling.
I mean, lawyers are supposed to be ultra vigilant about the issues of chain of possession. That is, how did a piece of evidence get from one step to another, how did it originate? Because if there are any lacunae in that chain, the court, the jury and judge will look askance at that evidence.
Yet, in your eagerness for finality, you have not asked one question about this issue. Therefore, in just a matter of days and sixteen posts, you have done what say Gil Jesus, David Josephs, John Armstrong, Martha Moyer and the later Ray Gallagher could not do in literally years of research, going back to the nineties.
Are you familiar with those issues at all? Have you researched them? Or are they irrelevant to you?
LANCE PAYETTE SAID:
I have read "Harvey and Lee" cover to cover twice and, in connection with this research, have reviewed at least some of the work of all the names you mention. What struck me was precisely what you seem to be accusing me of -- assumptions and conclusions as to what the Klein's money order "should" show, with little back-up documentation as to why it "should" show this.
I know John Armstrong put a tremendous amount of work into "Harvey and Lee", and I regard it as an invaluable resource, but he did make mistakes and some of his conjecture is far from convincing to me. What has taken place with the money order strikes me as more in the vein of, "We want the money order to be bogus to fit our theory, ergo it is bogus."
It strikes me as what I see too often: The CT True Believers will not be satisfied unless no one was who he appeared to be, no piece of evidence can be trusted, everyone was lying, everyone was part of the conspiracy, etc.
I have no agenda. If I had to bet my life savings, I'd place my money on "The man shot by Jack Ruby had no knowing involvement in the assassination of JFK." But I'm also sane enough to realize I could be 100% wrong. I refuse to be lumped with the crazies, those CT True Believers for whom their particular CT has become a fundamentalist religion.
This thread is about whether the Klein's money order should show evidence of endorsement by FNB and the Federal Reserve Bank, a very narrow issue. Ditto for the thread about the non-cut corner: a very narrow issue with a seemingly easy solution.
I don't purport to be any postal money order expert; I could be wrong about what I am seeing. Frankly, I'm pretty surprised at what I have managed to turn up with some minimal Internet sleuthing while I sit home with the flu, and even more surprised that it would be causing any controversy here.
Perhaps the question should be, "Why did Gil Jesus, David Josephs, John Armstrong, Martha Moyer and Ray Gallagher not find in literally years of research, going back to the nineties, what Barely Interested Lance has found in a day and a half?"
Truly, if the money order is bogus, I'll be delighted -- this would be way more interesting than the alternative. If it isn't bogus -- well, surely, no CT stands or falls with the money order. I'm just trying to follow the evidence where it leads.
Just in my posts, I have publicly waffled from thinking (1) the money order didn't require bank endorsements, to (2) the money order did require bank endorsements, to (3) the money order appears to show evidence of final processing by the Treasury Department. This is a "rush to find closure," in your view?
(The File Locator Number, if that's what it is, does strike me as "closure," I'll have to admit. It seems to me to be a deal-killer, simply because of what a File Locator Number is. If I learn beyond question that your car was sitting in your garage at the time of the accident, all of my other "evidence" it was involved in the accident pretty much falls by the wayside. If this is a File Locator Number and someone wants to persist with a new and improved theory as to why the FLN is just part of the conspiracy, be my guest.)
Where is John Armstrong? I thought he was going to be educating us in short order.
JAMES DiEUGENIO SAID:
What struck me was that once you assumed you knew what the File Locator number was and what it represented, you then said, that was it. Either it's closed or everyone is nuts. Period. As if nothing else mattered. Without interviewing any bank presidents or supervisors etc. Which John [Armstrong] just did.
And that interview will have a very much divergent view than yours. I think a 35-year bank president would be a pretty good court witness. But that does not mean anything to you, it seems. And you did not think it important to call one, did you?
JAMES DiEUGENIO ALSO SAID:
So we have this rifle, which as you must know is the wrong rifle -- in both classification and in length and weight. It was not the rifle the WC says Oswald ordered.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Jim's above comment about the "wrong rifle" is just outright nonsense. And I think, deep down, Jim knows it's pure nonsense.
Quoting from a discussion I had with DiEugenio in April of this year [2015] at Amazon.com:
"As for the assassination rifle being the "wrong rifle", as Jimmy likes to constantly say, DiEugenio knows perfectly well what the reasonable answer to that "36-inch vs. 40-inch" discrepancy is. I've pointed it out to him on several occasions in the past. But since he likes the idea of Oswald having never touched Carcano Rifle #C2766, Jim will forever ignore the logical answer to the "wrong rifle" topic.
But, of course, that's why we have had professional investigators and real detectives looking into these matters over the years, instead of relying on clowns like Jim DiEugenio to try and solve a Presidential assassination. If James had been in charge, Oswald would probably have posthumously been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize instead of being officially labelled what he was---a double murderer.
Re: the rifle....
"Regardless of exactly what it said in the American Rifleman magazine from which Lee Oswald ordered his rifle via mail-order (i.e., "36 inches" vs. "40 inches"; and "Carbine" vs. anything else), Klein's shipped a rifle with serial number C2766 to "A. Hidell" on March 20, 1963. The internal paperwork generated AT THE TIME in March of '63 (see Waldman Exhibit No. 7) confirms that Oswald/"Hidell" was shipped an Italian 6.5mm rifle with that exact serial number on it ("C2766")." -- DVP; September 21, 2008"
Also see:
JFK-Archives.blogspot.com/DVP Vs. DiEugenio (Part 99)
JFK-Archives.blogspot.com/DVP Vs. DiEugenio (Part 100)
JFK-Archives.blogspot.com/Oswald Ordered The Rifle
JAMES DiEUGENIO SAID:
This is a fact. Pure and simple: The rifle that the WC says Oswald ordered is not the rifle in evidence. It's the wrong rifle. Period. He [DVP] can fulminate and stomp his feet and fall on the floor about it and throw his usual John Barrymore tantrums a la Bugliosi. He's been doing it for years, decades actually.
None of that will erase this fact. It's the wrong rifle by length, weight and classification.
And there is no credible evidence Oswald ever picked it up. And in fact, he could not have picked it up by postal regs. So the WC lied about this. And they used Harry Holmes to do so. For a very succinct treatment of this, see Stewart Galanor's book called, appropriately enough, Cover Up. He deals with it in about four pages, and half of them are primary documents he got from writing the Postmaster General.
Harry Holmes' testimony contradicted that evidence. Either that or Galanor forged the letter he wrote and the documents he was sent. (Incredible the way these anti conspiracy guys end up embracing these fantastic solutions to their evidentiary problems.)
Now, my general point is this: how can an attorney [Lance Payette] isolate one tiny part of this transaction and say it's valid, based on that one point. When, in fact, everything about it--from A to Z--is dubious. And the guy who started the whole MO [Money Order] mess is Holmes! Who he ignores.
By doing so, is he not then guilty of doing the thing he says is true about the people he criticizes?
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Jim,
It's a thing called: Being able to properly and reasonably evaluate and assess the evidence in the JFK murder case without resorting to calling everybody under the sun a liar or a cover-up agent or a conspirator.
And as I have pointed out so many times in the past, that is something that James DiEugenio has never been able to do. And I think that becomes blatantly obvious when we look at the sum total of the many, many things that Jim is absolutely positive fall into the general category of "everything about it--from A to Z--is dubious" --- and I'm not talking about JUST the rifle evidence, but virtually EVERY SINGLE THING that points in the direction of Lee Harvey Oswald as the murderer of President Kennedy AND J.D. Tippit.
DiEugenio thinks ALL of the evidence pointing to Oswald is "dubious". All of it. It's ridiculous.
Just last week, I asked Jim:
"I'll be happy to rewrite that 20th item [on this list], Jim, if you can tell me JUST ONE single piece of evidence that leads to Oswald that you think was NOT faked, tainted, or manufactured. Is there one such piece? I don't think there is."
-- DVP; November 12, 2015
I never received an answer.
The silence was (and is) deafening.
TIM BRENNAN SAID:
Hi All,
Say, as DVP has pointed out, over at the Education Forum, a poster by the name of Lance Payette has identified the "138 4159796" number appearing at the top of the Hidell Postal Money Order as being a US Federal Reserve Bank File Locator Number (FLN), thus dispelling the notion that the Postal Money Order NEVER went through the US banking system, given that the FLN is applied DURING the Federal Reserve banking process.
This has provoked a round of sour grapes mumbling on the part of Jim DiEugenio, as he REFUSES to concede that one of his pet canards—that the Hidell Postal Order NEVER went thru the US banking system—has just been blown right out of the water.
I say well done, Lance Payette! We need MORE researchers like you and Tom Scully and LESS like Jim DiEugenio and Gil Jesus and their blithering NONSENSE!
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Hear, hear!
And now some conspiracy theorists are moving those goalposts (just as I expected), with some CTers now saying they think the ten-digit File Locator Number was faked by plotters. (What a surprise.)
So that would mean that the plotters, who were all members of the "Brilliant One Minute & Dumb As A Box Of Rocks The Next" club, were smart enough to forge the 10-digit File Locator Number on the Hidell money order, but too stupid to forge a First National Bank stamp (which most CTers still think should have been affixed to the Hidell money order).
"Let's Frame Oswald, Inc." evidently had Albert Einstein as its President and Homer Simpson as Vice President.
DAVID VON PEIN ALSO SAID:
FWIW....
Another (minor) point:
Tom Scully has reminded me via an e-mail that when any U.S. Postal Money Order was first purchased by someone in circa 1962-1963, it had TWO stubs attached to it — one of them is the "Purchaser's Receipt" and the other one is retained by the issuing post office and is marked "Post Office Record". This can be confirmed on Page #6 of this 11/29/62 "Postal Bulletin". Here's a photo of a sample money order stamped in November 1962, showing the two stubs attached:
Therefore, since the 1963 and 1966 yellow-tinted money orders that I posted pictures of earlier on this webpage had only a "Purchaser's Receipt" included in those photos (even though the serial numbers don't match in the 1966 example), it's quite likely that those money orders were actually purchased at a post office (or some other establishment that sold postal money orders), with the second stub being torn off by the cashier or clerk who sold the money order.
PAUL ERNST SAID:
So what?
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
The "conspiracy" point I was attempting to refute (at least in part) with my "FWIW" post about the "Two Stubs" is the claim that was mentioned by a couple of conspiracy theorists earlier [at Duncan MacRae's JFK Assassination Forum] that the yellow (E-Bay auctioned) money orders were probably fake or were, at least, never actually PURCHASED by anybody.
The lack of the "Post Office Record" stub doesn't PROVE those money orders were actually "purchased". But I think it goes in that direction. Because if those MOs were merely "samples" or "demonstrators" that were never actually handled by a postal clerk or a cashier of some kind, then those money orders would probably have had the second ("Post Office Record") stub still attached to them. But neither the 9/11/63 money order or the 5/17/66 money order shown earlier had the second stub/receipt affixed to it.
That's the "So what?"
It's not of critical importance, no. But I thought it was worth mentioning.
DAVID JOSEPHS SAID [IN THE AUDIO CLIP BELOW]:
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
In the above audio excerpt, David Josephs says that Robert Jackson's home address in Alexandria, Virginia, "does not exist".
But Tom Scully, himself a conspiracy theorist(!), has once again unearthed a document that tends to debunk some of the nonsense constantly being spouted by CTers about the money order and Oswald's purchase of Mannlicher-Carcano rifle #C2766. In this instance, Scully's research would seem to refute David Josephs' claim that Mr. Jackson's address does not exist at all.
On this webpage, Scully posted a photo of the death certificate of Robert Henry Jackson, one of the men who was involved in the initial retrieving and handling of the CE788 Hidell money order on November 23, 1963 [see CD87]. Jackson died in January 1977, and his residence is shown on his death certificate as "6108 Leewood Drive" in Alexandria, Virginia, the same city, located just 7 miles south of downtown Washington, D.C., where the Hidell money order was found on 11/23/63....
It could be that CTers David Josephs and John Armstrong were searching for Lee Wood Drive (with two words in the street name, which is how the street name is incorrectly spelled in the Secret Service document found on Page 3 of Commission Document No. 87), instead of Leewood Drive (one word).
But even if Josephs and Armstrong did a Google search for "Lee Wood" (two words), they would certainly have been prompted to also search for "Leewood" (spelled as one word) as well. ~shrug~
In any event, it's pretty clear that "Leewood Drive" does exist in the Washington suburb of Alexandria, Virginia. And that fact can easily be confirmed by looking up "Leewood Drive" on Google Maps, which I did, RIGHT HERE.
As far as Robert Jackson's street numbers not matching (CD87 says that Jackson lived at "2121 Lee Wood [sic] Drive"; while Jackson's death certificate indicates his residence as of 1977 was "6108 Leewood Drive"), I don't think that's any reason for a CTer to leap for joy and shout "Cover-Up" or "Conspiracy". It's possible that Mr. Jackson moved down the street between 1963 and 1977. Or perhaps the person who wrote up the Secret Service report in CD87 got the number wrong.
Or, just as likely, the city of Alexandria might have re-numbered Jackson's street address. And for verifiable proof that addresses are re-numbered occasionally in U.S. cities, just ask me. My house in Mooresville, Indiana, had a street number of 140 when I first moved into the home in 1982. But the number was changed by the city (or county) several years later to a much higher number, 7992.
So, I think we can chalk up the Lee Wood/Leewood Drive mystery as just one more thing that conspiracy theorists have been mistaken about when it comes to researching things associated with the assassination of John Kennedy.
RON SMITH SAID:
Things like this are when you miss Gary Mack's IM's [and e-mails].
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
You are oh so right about that, Ron.
Gary would probably have loved this recent "Money Order" debate, and he very likely would have provided several of us with a lot of useful information about the topic via e-mail, too.
I miss getting Gary's e-mails. Checking my e-mail just isn't the same since we lost Gary. I could always look forward to getting at least a few mails per month from Gary. Now, with him gone, I know my inbox will be filled with 100% junk mail—instead of just 99% junk and 1% from Gary Mack. :(
HENRY SIENZANT SAID:
David,
Not sure if you caught this, but Sandy Larsen is confusing P.O. DISBURSEMENT money orders with P.O. CONSUMER money orders (like the one Oswald purchased).
He says "Here's the proof", then cites something that doesn't apply to Oswald's money order whatsoever:
Sandy wrote:
"From the Code of Federal Regulations, 39 CFR 762.29c ....
"Endorsement of disbursement postal money orders drawn in favor of financial organizations:
All Disbursement Postal Money Orders drawn in favor of financial organizations, for credit to the accounts of persons designating payment so to be made, shall be endorsed in the name of the financial organization as payee in the usual manner."
[End Quote.]
A disbursement money order is one the Post Office issues to pay its own bills... they disburse the money to various contractors who do repairs, or those who they buy stuff from.
See the prior page, section 762.13: "Disbursement Postal Money Orders are issued solely by Postal data centers and solely for the purpose of paying Postal Service obligations."
Also see that page, section 762.11(b): "Disbursement Postal Money Orders, unlike other postal money orders, bear on their face the phrase, "This special money order is drawn by the postal service to pay one of its own obligations"."
And see page 211, section 762.11(a): "Disbursement Postal Money Orders have words of negotiability -- "Pay to the Order of" -- printed on their face, while other postal money orders simply bear the words "Pay to" on their face."
Oswald's money order was clearly NOT a disbursement money order. Oswald's money order bears the words "pay to", so it was NOT a disbursement money order.
As always, there's sleight of hand when conspiracy theorists try to present evidence. They claim it's one thing, but it's another thing entirely. Either they don't know the difference, or they know the difference and are trying to pull a fast one.
Count your fingers when discussing the JFK assassination with conspiracy theorists.
Larsen also cites this website:
FRB Procedures for Processing Postal Money Orders:
http://tfm.fiscal.treasury.gov/v2/p4/c700.html
But nowhere in there that I can find does it say the bank must affix its stamp to the money order. These are also the current rules, and he presents no evidence all this applied in 1963 (checks now have a number of safeguards to prevent forgery, and no doubt Postal Money Orders have improved & the processing may have changed in various ways in the intervening 52 years as well).
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Thanks, Hank. Excellent work on noting the difference between "Disbursement Postal Money Orders" and the type of ordinary money orders that consumers purchase at post offices.
I'm glad you scrolled back one page in those Postal Regulations, Hank, because apparently nobody else did -- and that includes me. And I'm ashamed to admit that I didn't scroll back to that page you discovered. Because by doing so, you have totally defeated Sandy Larsen's "proof" regarding this topic.
Plus, let me add one more section of Postal Regulation 762.11 that you didn't mention in your post, Hank....
762.11(c) --- "The amounts of Disbursement Postal Money Orders are printed in words as well as numbers, while the amounts of postal money orders available at post offices are printed in numbers only."
As we can see, the Oswald/Hidell money order has the amount ($21.45) printed only in numbers, not in words:
So, I guess I was on the right track when I said this to Sandy Larsen last month:
"I'm not sure that the information in "Paragraph C" of those money order regulations really means what you think it means. The word "drawn" has me confused. The Hidell money order was "drawn" in favor of Klein's Sporting Goods, was it not? It wasn't "drawn" "in favor of [a] financial organization". And Paragraph C says that, in effect, the financial organization is the "payee". Wouldn't that mean the name of the financial institution would also be on the "PAY TO" line on the front of the money order too?" -- DVP; 11/12/2015
SANDY LARSEN SAID:
Since 1987, postal money orders have, by law, required bank endorsements.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
But unless someone can prove that the 10-digit File Locator Number stamped at the top of the Hidell money order is fake (which nobody is ever going to be able to prove, of course), then there is solid EVIDENCE that the CE788 money order did go through the regular banking channels in order to reach the Federal Reserve Bank.
And if some conspiracy believers want to maintain that a First National Bank endorsement was necessary on a processed money order in 1963, and if those same CTers also believe that the File Locator Number seen on the Hidell M.O. is a fraudulent number and was placed there by conspirators who wanted to frame Lee Harvey Oswald, then the question MUST be asked:
If the plotters were smart enough to know they needed to fake the File Locator Number on the money order, then why didn't they also realize that they needed to fake a First National Bank stamped endorsement on the back of the money order as well?
SANDY LARSEN SAID:
Yes, [the File Locator Number is] evidence, but a far cry from being proof. Otherwise, someone could buy that punch card money order on e-Bay for $100, stamp a file locator number on it, and declare that it has therefore been processed. Even though we all know that it hasn't.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Well, since every last thing connected with the JFK evidence COULD have been fake, then what's the use of even pointing out the "evidence" against Oswald at all?
Such talk about everything being fake or manufactured borders on the insane with a lot of Internet conspiracy believers.
It's been proven that there's a "File Locator Number" on the Hidell money order (just as there should be)....so the CTers move the goalposts and now claim that the FLN is fake too (in addition to the PERFECT Oswald handwriting on the money order too, remember, which many CTers also insist was forged onto the M.O.; and it was such a perfect forgery, it fooled EVERY single handwriting expert who ever testified about the writing on the M.O. for the Warren Commission and HSCA; and those experts, remember, had the ORIGINAL money order to examine, not just a copy).
And there's Waldman #7, which many CTers insist was ALSO a forgery, of course, even though that document was pulled from the files of Klein's in Chicago by Klein's personnel on 11/23/63. (I guess the Klein's people were "in" on the plot too.)
In short, when someone needs to jump through so many different "It Was Fake" hoops, it's my opinion that it's probably a good sign that the person jumping through all those hoops is wrong---and Oswald was just flat-out guilty AND ordered that rifle from Klein's Sporting Goods, which is exactly what the sum total of evidence clearly indicates--and proves beyond a reasonable doubt.
SANDY LARSEN SAID:
Well, it's just speculation on my part of course. But it seems like somebody could buy a money order, cash it, then request a copy. After that, buy another money order, and bribe the postal worker to pre-date it. (Or if they have a postal worker friend, have him do it.) Then have an expert handwriting forger put Oswald's handwriting on the form. Finally, get a rubber stamp made and stamp a fake file locator number on it. Oh, one last thing... get a Klein's endorsement stamp made and stamp the back.
But at the moment I don't think that is what happened, because it appears to me that the money order was actually made on regular paper, not the real card stock. Because the ink has bled through all over the place. Why anybody would fabricate a money order on regular paper, I have no way of knowing. And it makes no sense to me. But that's what appears to have happened. I have a hard time believing that the bleed-thru that we see is actually due to the MO getting wet, as Lance notes has been suggested.
Actually, I can think of one reason why regular paper might be used. If the intention was to merely provide photographs to the authorities, not a real money order, using a photocopier to make the MO could be handy. It could be retouched and then photocopied again, and repeated if necessary. When finished, a photo is given to the WC.
If this were the case, one would have to explain how it was that somebody actually held and carried the MO from Alexandria, or wherever it was the MO came from. I don't know the details enough to determine if that was feasible.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
As I said before, Sandy, when you have to go through THAT MANY wholly unprovable (and, frankly, crazy) contortions in order to make that money order a "fake" M.O., isn't it just time to admit the obvious? -- I.E., that Lee Oswald, with his own handwriting, purchased a regular money order at the post office in Dallas on 3/12/63 and then mailed it to Klein's, who then, in turn, stamped it with their "Pay To The Order" rubber stamp and sent it on to their bank in Chicago, who then, in turn, sent it on to the next stop (the Federal Reserve Bank in Chicago; despite the lack of a "First National" stamp on the M.O.; but it seems pretty obvious to me that such a stamped endorsement was not required for U.S. Postal Money Orders in March 1963), with the FRB in Chicago then sending the M.O. on to its final resting place in Alexandria/Washington.
Sandy, do you really think there are truly MORE reasons to believe the Hidell money order was fraudulent than there are reasons to believe it was a legitimate document that made the normal, non-sinister journey I just laid out above?
ALBERT DOYLE SAID:
Still, Rule 5 says the bank must add its endorsement upon transfer.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
I would guess that the Hidell money order was probably "endorsed" as part of a bulk batch of U.S. Postal Money Orders sent by First National Bank to the Federal Reserve Bank in Chicago.
All of the money orders in such a "bulk" transfer were going to be sent to the very same place--the FRB in Chicago, Illinois--so I can't see why a single stamped endorsement placed on a separate document (which would be attached to the bundle of bulk money orders being sent from First National to the FRB) wouldn't suffice in a bulk transaction like that, instead of having to stamp a separate endorsement on each and every money order.
I do not know for certain if such a "single endorsement on bulk transfers" procedure was actually in place at major U.S. banks in 1963, but such a process makes perfect sense to me. And it would certainly save the bank a lot of "stamping" time too.
SANDY LARSEN SAID THIS.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Thanks, Sandy.
But as part of these sections of the regulation you cited....
"Postal money orders will be handled in accordance with an agreement made by the Postmaster General, in behalf of the United States, and the Federal Reserve Banks as depositaries and fiscal agents of the United States. .... All cash items sent to us, or to another Federal Reserve Bank direct for our account, should be endorsed without restriction to the order of the Federal Reserve Bank to which sent, or endorsed to the order of any bank, banker or trust company, or with some similar endorsement. .... The endorsement of the sending bank should be dated and should show the American Bankers Association transit number of the sending bank in prominent type on both sides."
....why couldn't something like the procedure I talked about yesterday at another forum have been in place for "bulk" transfers of U.S. Postal Money Orders?
Yes, it says "All cash items" in that postal regulation you cited, and it also says the cash items should be dated and should show a transit number "on both sides" (geez, imagine the time it would take to place all those markings and stamps on BOTH SIDES of each and every one of the hundreds if not thousands of Postal Money Orders that were being sent to a huge bank like the First National Bank in Chicago on a daily basis), but I'm still thinking that in the case of large bulk transfers or deposits of U.S. Postal Money Orders, the process I have just speculated about was probably the way First National Bank handled the Hidell money order in 1963 (seeing as how that M.O. does not have any First National stamp on it at all).
DAVID VON PEIN LATER SAID:
Important Addendum....
Well, it looks like Sandy Larsen completely overlooked (or just ignored) this important part of those 1969 regulations. Let's look at Section 16....
"16. In the event a cash item is received by a Federal Reserve Bank from a sender without the endorsement thereon of such sender, the Federal Reserve Bank may present, send, or forward the item as if it bore such endorsement, or place on the item the name of such sender and the date of its receipt by the Federal Reserve Bank, or return the item to the sender for proper endorsement by the sender. This Bank makes the warranties stated in Section 210.6(b) of Regulation J by presenting, sending, or forwarding a cash item. These warranties arise whether or not such item bears the endorsement of this Bank."
[End Quote.]
The above paragraph makes it quite clear that a bank DOES NOT have to place its endorsement on each and every United States Postal Money Order (or "cash item") that it sends to a Federal Reserve Bank.
And even though "Regulation 16" shown above is from a 1969 document, to quote Sandy....
"The regulations were essentially the same in 1969 as they were in 1960 (and 1963)." -- Sandy Larsen; December 4, 2015
Here's a screen capture of Regulation #16:
Boy oh boy, I feel sorry for Sandy Larsen. Between the disaster I just created for him by citing Regulation #16 above, and the previous embarrassment he suffered when he boldly declared "Here's the proof" when he first started this thread on November 12, 2015 (only to have to admit his "proof" didn't apply to the Hidell money order at all, since the Hidell M.O. was not a "Disbursement Money Order")....Sandy's having a rough November and December. :)
SANDY LARSEN SAID:
Regulation 16 says that non-endorsed items MIGHT be processed. Or they might be returned. What bank is gonna decide NOT to endorse their checks and then hope they aren't returned? Regulation 16 is for when accidents happen.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
And that's where my Post #198 comes back into play, regarding First National Bank possibly endorsing just ONE piece of paper that was then attached to a BULK TRANSFER/DEPOSIT of Postal Money Orders -- which is what I think probably did happen with the Hidell money order. And this type of bulk transfer is discussed by Tom Scully (who's also done some very good research on this "Money Order" topic).
An excerpt from Scully:
"Planning by the Dept. of the Treasury from at least 1957 culminated in larger banks being able to avoid burdening Fed Bank sorting and processing of large lots destined for a single payor, in this instance US Treasury issued checks and after June 1962, gradually all US postal money orders as well, since all were processed by the Treasurer's Information System and post processing were archived in the same place. This was a planned, and in March 1963, a recently implemented efficiency innovation. Big banks fine sorted the large lots of US Treasury issued checks and postal money orders in sequential serial numbers with a reconciliation data tape and a cash letter and only regional Fed Banks transport service to the Washington, DC Treasurer's ADP center. I researched and presented these planned developments." -- Tom Scully; Dec. 2, 2015
From the 1960 regulations Sandy posted earlier:
SANDY LARSEN SAID:
You're talking about the "fine-sort program," where the bank does the sorting so that the Federal Reserve Bank doesn't have to.
Let me tell you, I've had just about enough of Tom Scully. I've read several of his posts. He ridicules John Armstrong followers (and numerous static web pages) because they're still pushing the old money order theories. Well what does he expect? That they should spontaneously update as he discovers new information? He needles this guy on his forum because he speculates. What's so wrong with speculating, as long as it's clear that that's what you're doing? He also disses the guy for not contributing new material himself. Well maybe the guy isn't into that. Or maybe he contributes elsewhere.
He claims that only he and Lance Payette are contributing new information re. the money order, and that nobody on Education Forum is. He says that I'm misleading people... and no, he wasn't talking about the disbursement PMOs [Postal Money Orders], he was talking about the laws I've found that ARE on the mark.
I think it's time for Tom Scully to eat a little humble pie. He keeps pounding on the fine-sort program, like that explains how it is that the money order hasn't any bank stamps on it. Well guess what, Mr. Scully... the fine sort program wasn't established till 1979. It was first tested in a pilot program in 1970 at the Washington-Baltimore Regional Check Clearing Center. In 1974 it was implemented at the New York FRB only. And in 1979 the program was expanded to all FRBs.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
You're wrong, Sandy.
Pictured below are two illustrations dug up by Tom Scully that prove such a "fine sorting" system was in place as early as April 1960.
HERE is the 1960 source document which contains the images below.
Click to enlarge:
SANDY LARSEN SAID:
No David, I'm right.
Both of those diagrams above represent processing facilities at Federal Reserve Banks, NOT commercial banks. Everywhere it says "fine sorted" it is referring to the fine sorting done by FRBs.
Fine sorting isn't a fancy type of sorting method. It is just a very thorough and precise type of sorting that is required to properly route checks to their paying banks.
Prior to 1974/1979, FRBs did the fine sorting. The reason they introduced the fine-sorting program was to allow banks to do the sorting themselves so they could save money. Because FRBs charged money for the service. And some banks figured they could do it at a lower cost.
Fine sorting is analogous to pre-sorting outgoing mail, which some businesses do to lower their postage costs.
That 1960 article doesn't even mention the fine-sort program.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Yes, you're absolutely correct (I think), Sandy. It would appear that the
1960 document that I referred you to is talking only about the sorting methods of checks AFTER the checks (and probably money orders too) got to a Federal Reserve Bank.
If somebody can show where Sandy is wrong about what he said in his last post about "fine sorting", I'll be happy to update this part of this never-ending battle concerning "The Money Order". (Are you listening, Tom Scully? I'm sure he is.) :)
I must say, this lengthy debate, featuring more ups and downs than an Otis elevator, has got to be the weirdest, most incredible odyssey I've ever been associated with when it comes to any sub-topic dealing with the JFK assassination. It's simply been unbelievable.
Victory (or so it seems). Then defeat. Then a (partial) victory---or so it seems. Then the rug gets pulled out from underneath somebody yet again in the very next post. Absolutely mind-boggling. It's endless. I've never seen anything like it in all my born days here at the CIA Disinfo Center at Langley. ~wink~
But at this point--as I reach for more aspirin while I wallow in my latest defeat (or so it seems) at the hands of Sandy Larsen regarding the "fine sort" matter--I want to repeat a couple of important things that I have mentioned earlier in this saga, which are things that, in my own opinion, prove the conspiracists are 100% wrong when they cry "That money order is a fake!" ....
"The TWO most important things (IMO) that establish the 1963 Hidell money order as being a legitimate and valid document are: Oswald's writing on the money order (as determined by multiple handwriting analysts in 1964 and 1978 -- Cole, Cadigan, McNally, and Scott) and the Klein's "Pay To The Order Of First National Bank" stamp on the back of the money order. So we KNOW from the above two things that Oswald handled and wrote on that money order and Klein's Sporting Goods handled and stamped the same document. And the above two things are true, IMO, even without any other bank markings present on the document." -- DVP
And let me also repeat this comment from several weeks ago in this discussion....
"As for the lack of any bank stamps appearing on the back of Oswald's postal money order, I don't have a definitive answer to explain it.
But I'd be willing to bet the farm that there IS a reasonable and non-conspiratorial answer to explain the lack of markings on the back of that document without resorting to the conclusion that the money order was manufactured and faked by a group of conspirators in a complicated and intricate effort to frame Lee Harvey Oswald for John F. Kennedy's murder." -- DVP
Thank you. And good night.
SANDY LARSEN SAID:
David, I thoroughly enjoyed your synopsis of this thread. It truly has been a roller coaster ride. Mind if I borrow a couple of those Excedrin?
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Sure. I've got plenty now. Since this discussion began, I've been buying it by the gross. :)
And FWIW, here's something else (which might not mean anything at all, but I'll add it here anyway since this "Money Order" discussion has become the quintessential example of "How to seemingly win an argument one minute, but then fall flat on your face the next". So why should I do anything to derail that lovely pattern at this point in the proceedings? :)
The image below comes from another one of the very obscure documents unearthed by Tom Scully deep from the bowels of the amazing Internet. I've added the black box around the relevant text concerning "large commercial banks" and "regularly exchange bundles of checks referred to as "cash letters" with each other".
To see the whole 1964 document, CLICK HERE. ....
DAVID JOSEPHS SAID THIS.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
David Josephs,
That CD7 document isn't the document that Lance Payette wants to see. The document that (apparently) John Armstrong was using to support what he said on page 451 of his book "Harvey And Lee" indicates (per Armstrong) that Wilmouth gave an interview saying that a Postal Money Order would have to be stamped FOUR different times in order to be legitimate.
The CD7 document doesn't say anything about Wilmouth talking about the alleged "four bank stamps".
But if that CD7 document is actually the document that Armstrong is using to prop up his theory that money orders require FOUR different endorsement stamps, then he has significantly misled his readers, because that FBI report in CD7 doesn't say anything at all about how many endorsements (if any) should be affixed to U.S. Postal Money Orders.
(The document seen in the CD7 link, btw, is exactly the same as CD75, which is the document that I've been linking to many times during this discussion.)
But, as mentioned multiple times previously, the CD7 / CD75 FBI document does pretty much debunk all of the nonsense about the Hidell money order being a phony document. Here's what we find in that FBI report (emphasis is my own):
"Robert K. Wilmouth, Vice-President, Operations Department, The First National Bank of Chicago, Clark and Monroe Streets, furnished the following information...A deposit made with the bank on March 15, 1963, by Klein's Sporting Goods...was processed by the bank on March 16, 1963. .... The other item of $21.45 was a Postal Money Order which was sent to the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago on March 16, 1963."
JAMES DiEUGENIO SAID:
Davey has so much rubber on his face from trying so many angles to get around this orphan money order that he looks like Jason from Friday the 13th.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
And so, Jim, let's see if you (or your hero, John Armstrong) can defeat by FAR the biggest VICTORY for the "Money Order Is Legit" side in this whole discussion --- the File Locator Number, which is a number we KNOW (via Lance Payette's excellent work) is only stamped on a check or money order AFTER it reaches the Federal Reserve Bank.
Good luck proving the FLN seen on Oswald's M.O. is a forgery, Jimmy. Not to mention the other THREE things that pretty much prove that CTers are dead wrong about the M.O. being fraudulent --- (1) Oswald's own writing on the subject M.O.; (2) the Klein's stamp on that same document; and (3) the fact that the money order was found on 11/23/63 in just exactly the place where you'd expect to find it if it had gone through the proper banking channels--the Federal Records Center in Alexandria, Virginia.
Have fun proving ALL of that stuff was part of a "Let's Frame Oswald" plot, Jim.
(I see a little rubber there on your own face, Jimbo.)
JAMES DiEUGENIO SAID:
Sandy has alredy [sic] dealt with that so well, that I am not even going to comment on it.
The written statutes, two sets, plus two bank supervisor witnesses is plenty.
But...
I predict that, in spite of that, DVP will not mention any of the statutes, or either of the interviews--and BTW, the one John [Armstrong] did is really something, since the supervisor was literally stunned--and he will now place this on his web site. And he will now say that the MO is for real. Even though it was never stamped as going through the system. As it should have been by law.
As per your other arguments about handwriting, please give us all a break on this. You and John McAdams with your FBI handwriting analysis is like a broken record. David Josephs contravened you very effectively on this, and like everything else that neuters your argument, you shove it under the rug. Down the memory hole so that people at your site don't see it.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Talk about a broken record. I think you're a great example of a "broken record", Jimmy. And it's the exact same song on both Side A and Side B -- "This Is Fake! This Is Fake!"
Please give everyone a break from that silly refrain, will ya?
As for the handwriting analysis, Jim has no choice but to think that all of the various questioned documents examiners who looked at the ORIGINAL "HIDELL" MONEY ORDER in 1964 and 1978 for the Warren Commission and the HSCA were wrong (or liars).
Or, as an alternative, Jim must think that someone was able to perfectly re-create Lee Oswald's handwriting on the CE788 money order so that this alleged forgery was able to fool MULTIPLE handwriting experts who would later be rendering an opinion on the matter.
Yeah, sure, Jim.
BTW, I recently had a battle with a mega-kook named Ben Holmes over at Amazon concerning the subject of the handwriting on the money order. That discussion can be found HERE.
JAMES DiEUGENIO SAID:
As per the date, uh Davey, you very conveniently leave out the role of Harry Holmes don't you? Very predictable by you. Especially for anyone who knows your methodology.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
News Flash for James DiEugenio!! ----
David Von Pein, unlike Jim DiEugenio, isn't obligated by law to believe that every single person in Dallas and Washington was on a mission to frame a patsy named Lee Harvey Oswald in November 1963!
You and other conspiracy hounds see sinister and underhanded activity in the testimony and the statements of Postal Inspector Harry D. Holmes. I, however, do not "see" things the same strange way you see them, Jim. And I "see" no good enough reason in the written statements or actions of Harry Holmes to cause me to believe he was lying through his teeth with respect to the manner in which the Hidell money order was found and recovered OR with respect to the things Holmes said in his testimony regarding the manner in which Lee Harvey Oswald very likely took possession of the Carcano rifle at the Dallas post office in late March of 1963.
If you want to toss Holmes under your conspiracy bus, go right ahead. But I'm certainly not going to help you do it.
JAMES DiEUGENIO SAID:
You also leave out David Josephs' work on the timeline. Nice going.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Typical of you, Jim. You fail, yet again, to factor in ANY "ordinary human error" into the equation. In your mind, ANY kind of discrepancy or error in time-keeping or other human-like mistakes that might have cropped up while trying to hunt down the Hidell money order MUST have some kind of sinister roots and therefore can ONLY signal Foul Play.
But we know that Harry Holmes was initially futilely searching for a money order made out in the amount of $21.95, instead of the correct amount of $21.45. So this led to some confusion at the beginning of the search....
HARRY HOLMES -- "The FBI furnished me the information that a money order of some description in the amount of $21.95 had been used as reimbursement for the gun that had been purchased from Klein's in Chicago, and that the purchase date was March 20, 1963. I immediately had some men begin to search the Dallas money order records with the thought that they might have used a U.S. postal money order to buy this gun. .... So in about an hour, Postal Inspector McGee of Chicago called back then and said that the correct amount was $21.95--$21.45 excuse me--and that the shipping---they had received this money order on March the 13th, whereas I had been looking for March 20. So then I passed the information to the men who were looking for this money order stub to show which would designate, which would show the number of the money order, and that is the only way you could find one. I relayed this information to them and told them to start on the 13th because he could have bought it that morning and that he could have gotten it by airmail that afternoon, so they began to search and within 10 minutes they called back and said they had a money order in that amount issued on, I don't know that I show, but it was that money order in an amount issued at the main post office, which is the same place as this post office box was at that time, box 2915 and the money order had been issued early on the morning of March the 12th, 1963."
~~~~~~~
Plus, the confusion about exactly WHERE the processed money order should have been found is, as far as I am concerned, explained in full in Commission Document No. 75 (on Pages 668 and 669), wherein the FBI first received some information from First National Bank Vice President Robert Wilmouth stating his belief that the Federal Reserve Bank in Chicago sent all of its processed money orders to Kansas City.
But on the next page of the FBI report (Page 669), it's revealed by FRB Assistant Cashier Lester Gohr that not all of the money orders handled by the FRB in Chicago are sent to Kansas City. Gohr told the FBI that 75% of them were being sent to Washington (i.e., Alexandria, VA.), while only about 25% were sent to Kansas City.
I see nothing sinister or conspiratorial in the way any of this information was being relayed, forwarded, or acted upon by the people who ultimately found the Oswald/Hidell Postal Money Order in exactly the location where it should have been found--Alexandria, Virginia--after it had gone through the hands of Klein's, First National Bank, and the FRB in Chicago.
And I see nothing in David Josephs' "Money Order Timeline" that would suddenly make me want to jump aboard the CT ship. In fact, I think that ship has been floundering for 52 years.
JAMES DiEUGENIO SAID:
Finally, as you will see when John is done, it was not actually found exactly where it should be found.
But see, that is the kind of work you do. Which is why Mel Ayton contacted you.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
So, Jim, I guess that means you are now adding the three Chicago FBI agents who were responsible for the report in CD75 to your list of liars now, eh? Or maybe you think the Assistant FRB Cashier, Lester Gohr, was the liar when he told those three FBI men that "three-fourths of the money orders were being sent to Washington, D.C." from the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
Was Mr. Gohr lying through his teeth when he said that to those three FBI agents on November 23, 1963?
I'd really like to see your "Complete List Of Liars" connected to the JFK assassination, Jim. Based on the huge number of bizarre things that I know you believe, I'm guessing that the length of such a list might rival Vincent Bugliosi's "Reclaiming History" for size and sheer bulk.
TIM BRENNAN SAID:
The Money Order Bleed-Thru Problem Explained....
One of the reservations expressed about the veracity of [the Hidell money order] is the apparent "bleed thru" effect of the postal stamp and other details, given that US Postal Money Orders were actually of a computer punch card type by this time in 1963.
However, it seems that this issue can be explained. The card was subjected to a chemical process, which bleaches and makes inks run, in order to establish whether or not there were latent fingerprints upon it.
After this, a process known as "desilvering" was applied to the card to return it as much as possible to its previous state, though obviously some effects of the fingerprinting process, like ink run, remained in place.
Fortunately, though, FBI handwriting expert James C. Cadigan examined the card and had it photographed BEFORE the fingerprinting process took place. This is a much CLEARER copy of the Money Order, Cadigan's handwriting arrows notwithstanding ----> CADIGAN EXHIBIT NO. 11.
As can be seen, the UNTREATED card, Cadigan Exhibit 11, DOESN'T appear to exhibit the "bleed thru" problems we see in CE 788.
Relevant parts of Cadigan's testimony re this matter are here and here.
H/T [Hat Tip] to DVP re this, who has been fighting the good fight on the Postal Money Order matter over at the Education Forum for WEEKS.
Way to go DVP!
Regards,
Tim Brennan
Sydney, Australia
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Excellent, Tim!
Thank you for pointing out the difference between the photos of the money order. The picture of the M.O. as seen in Cadigan Exhibit No. 11 most certainly does not exhibit the bleed-thru that is apparent in Commission Exhibit No. 788.
Here's a direct comparison of the two exhibits:
And, as Tim pointed out, Cadigan #11 is a picture that was taken BEFORE the money order was treated for fingerprints, per Cadigan's Warren Commission testimony (at 7 H 434).
Here's what Cadigan said:
MELVIN A. EISENBERG -- "Do you know why Exhibit No. 820 was not reprocessed or desilvered?"
JAMES C. CADIGAN -- "No, this is a latent fingerprint matter."
MR. EISENBERG -- "Can you explain why the signature, "Lee Oswald" or rather "L. H. Oswald" is apparent, while the signature "A. J. Hidell" is not?"
MR. CADIGAN -- "Different inks."
MR. EISENBERG -- "Some inks are more soluble in the solution used for fingerprint tests than others?"
MR. CADIGAN -- "Definitely."
MR. EISENBERG -- "Other Commission Exhibits, specifically Nos. 788, 801, and 802 also appear to have been treated for fingerprints?"
MR. CADIGAN -- "That is correct."
MR. EISENBERG -- "Exhibit No. 788 has been desilvered?"
MR. CADIGAN -- "Desilvered, and Exhibits Nos. 801 and 802 are still in their original silvered condition."
MR. EISENBERG -- "Did you see these items before they were treated for fingerprints."
MR. CADIGAN -- "I know I saw Exhibit No. 788 before it was treated for fingerprints. As to Exhibits Nos. 801 and 802, I don't know at this time."
MR. EISENBERG -- "Are the photographs which you produced photographs of the items before they were treated for fingerprints or after?"
MR. CADIGAN -- "Yes; before they were treated for fingerprints. In other words, it is regular customary practice to photograph an exhibit before it is treated for latents for exactly this reason, that in the course of the treatment there may be some loss of detail, either total or partial."
~~~~~~~~~~
Thanks again, Tim Brennan, for this discovery. It looks like you've just hammered one more nail into the coffin of the "Money Order Is Fake" theory.
SANDY LARSEN SAID:
Brilliant!
That makes things easier for me. Thanks Tim Brennan and DVP!
ALBERT DOYLE SAID:
I mentioned way back that the bleed-through might be due to side effects of police technical analysis of the Money Order during the investigation. Seemed like an obvious possible cause.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Good job, Albert.
And now to "Pre-empt the Defense".....
We can now probably expect to hear from the CTers regarding a different "Money Order" subject....
Whether or not Jim Cadigan and Alwyn Cole examined the original money order for the handwriting analysis BEFORE or AFTER it was treated for fingerprints.
If it was AFTER, the CTers will, of course, say we must disregard Cadigan's & Cole's anaylsis of it being Oswald's writing, because the chemical treatment of the M.O. had altered the document and the ink before it was examined.
And it also means that McNally and Scott and the other HSCA handwriting experts examined the M.O. only after it had been treated with chemicals (quite obviously, since it was treated in 1963 and the HSCA didn't exist until the 1970s).
EDIT --- Alwyn Cole definitely examined the money order only AFTER it had been treated for fingerprints....
MR. EISENBERG -- "Mr. Cole, before you discuss your conclusion, the handwriting on 788 seems to have a slight blur in some parts. Could you explain that in any way?"
MR. COLE -- "Yes; it is my view that this document has been in contact with moisture which affected the ink of the handwriting. Such contact might have been through an effort to develop fingerprints."
MR. EISENBERG -- "Was it or is it discolored at this point at all, do you think?"
MR. COLE -- "There are only two small areas of discoloration on this document, one of them being along the upper edge just above the figure "9," and the other along the right edge just opposite the figure "5." This indicates to me that at one time this document was more deeply stained but has been cleared up by some chemical bleach."
MR. EISENBERG -- "Was it in the same condition when you examined it as it is now?"
MR. COLE -- "It was."
TIM NICKERSON SAID:
[From BankersOnline.com:]
Question:
Would the check be properly endorsed? If a check is payable to John Smith and Mary Smith, Settlers and Trustees of The John and Mary Smith Revocable Living Trust, is it sufficient to endorse the check with "For Deposit Only" and an account number? There are no markings or stamps on the back of the check from the depositary bank.
Answer:
That endorsement would be sufficient as long as it was deposited into a like-named account. The BOFD [Bank Of First Deposit] has provided you a warranty that this has happened and if it did not, you have recourse through the BOFD.
First published on BankersOnline.com 7/23/12 ----> CLICK HERE.
Answered by: Randy Carey.
There is a forum at that site and a search feature. I did a fair amount of searching there. Unfortunately, it seems that some of the info we are looking for is restricted to premium members.
TIM NICKERSON LATER SAID:
Question:
What are the risks to financial institutions if the merchant doesn't obtain proper endorsement or follow appropriate endorsement standards?
Answer:
If the item is payable to the depositing customer, there are no endorsement issues. Under section 4-205 of the UCC [Uniform Commercial Code], the bank automatically becomes a holder of the instrument, even if it is not endorsed, if it is deposited to the account of the payee. If the item is not payable to the depositor, the item must be endorsed by the payee in blank or must be specially endorsed to the depositor. If the item is not endorsed by the payee, the depositing customer and the depositary bank would be in breach of the presentment warranties under the UCC.
[Source:]
BankersOnline.com/qa
TOM SCULLY SAID:
It follows that, after FBI lab "processing" of the $21.45 postal money order, it was much less authoritive for the purposes of evidentiary value than the "official" photographs of that money order taken before processing.
I expect [Albert] Doyle and other interested parties do not fully understand the Federal Reserve Bank role and the fact that no human examined automatically processed money orders for endorsements, which were not required, anyway, and lack of presence of had no effect on processing or claim of payment by First National Bank of Chicago.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
I imagine that even Sandy Larsen at The Education Forum by this time is pretty much convinced the Hidell M.O. was not a faked or forged document. The excellent VISUAL proof that the M.O. (as seen in Cadigan No. 11) does not show any of the bleed-thru that CE788 exhibits is likely the thing that will tip the scales for Sandy in the direction of "There's No Forgery Here". Particularly after Sandy said this to me four days ago:
"I wouldn't be questioning the money order if missing stamps was the only irregularity. I might have even dropped it today or sometime soon if it weren't for the ink bleeding thru. But naturally I don't intend on spending a great deal more time on this aspect of the case. There are other more important things to investigate. I chose this only because it seemed to be simple at the time. The bleeding ink is harder to understand than the missing stamps." -- Sandy Larsen; December 2, 2015
DAVID VON PEIN LATER SAID:
I'd also like to give some credit to Lance Payette for previously pointing out that the "bleed-thru" on the money order could possibly be explained if the document had become "wet". Lance said this on 12/2/15:
"I am speaking from memory here and thus am willing to be corrected, but I recall in reviewing the Armstrong materials at Baylor University that there was a seemingly innocuous contemporary document referring to the fact that the money order showed evidence of having becoming [sic] wet at one point, which would explain the apparent bleeding-through.
Good Lord, if the conspirators were so incredibly inept that they couldn't even use the correct punch-card stock, surely the answer after the assassination would have been "The money order was destroyed in accordance with applicable regulations" or something like that. It's like we're dealing with a religion here — the money order must be phony, or there is no God." -- Lance Payette; December 2, 2015
ALBERT DOYLE SAID:
[Sandy] Larsen has a done a good job of showing the 1960 Regulations required a bank number and date stamp. He also cited the same in the 1969 Regulations, so that means they applied in 1963 as well.
CRAIG LAMSON SAID:
Actually all he did is prove it was not a requirement. The salient word here is SHOULD. Not shall or must.
Larsen failed and you just did too.
ALBERT DOYLE SAID:
Obviously just a denier trying to get the most out of semantics as possible against the obvious.
[...]
As far as I see it, nobody has yet topped Larsen's citation of the Federal Bank Regulation 'Circular' showing Money Orders had to have a bank number and date stamp according to the rules.
CRAIG LAMSON SAID:
The word "SHOULD" in this case is not just semantics.
Why don't you research it in a legal context. Or would that destroy your carefully constructed fantasy?
TIM NICKERSON SAID:
Sandy Larsen, over on the ED Forum, says that he has shown that bank endorsements were indeed required on PMOs. He's wrong and I don't see where anyone has pointed that out to him.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
To reiterate, a "cash letter" for a bulk deposit would, in my view, still satisfy the regulation cited below, without the First National Bank personnel needing to place multiple separate stamped endorsements on each and every U.S. Postal Money Order that was part of such a "bulk" deposit/transfer.
If the bulk transfer from First National Bank to the Federal Reserve Bank was accompanied by a slip of paper that had all the stamped endorsements and information mentioned in Rule 13 (from the 1960 regulations) or Rule 15 (from the 1969 regulations), please tell me why that would not satisfy the endorsement policy?
Maybe we can now get into a big debate over the words "All cash items" vs. the words "Each cash item".
It seems to me that a bulk transfer, which would include just one piece of paper (i.e., deposit slip) for the entire "batch" of money orders being sent to the FRB (i.e., for "ALL cash items" within the bundled bulk package), would be a way of transferring a large amount of money orders from FNB to the FRB without violating anything written in this regulation here....
"All cash items sent to us, or to another Federal Reserve Bank direct for our account, should be endorsed without restriction to, or to the order of, the Federal Reserve Bank to which sent, or endorsed to, or to the order of, any bank, banker, or trust company, or endorsed with equivalent words or abbreviations thereof. The endorsement of the sender should be dated and should show the A.B.A. transit number of the sender, if any, in prominent type on both sides of the endorsement."
And I'd like to again remind everyone of Regulation #12 (from 1960):
TIM NICKERSON SAID:
David,
If we're going to get into a debate over the words "All cash items" vs. the word "Each", then perhaps we could add the words "should", "shall", and "must" into the mix as well.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Yes, Tim, I agree.
SANDY LARSEN SAID ALL THIS.
JAMES DiEUGENIO SAID:
BTW, if DVP is quoting people like Lammie and Nickerson, he has lost.
He should just throw in the towel right now.
He does not even know that in the domain of administrative law, the word "should" means just that. It should be done, or it's questionable and you will be called on it.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Let's review....
>> Oswald's writing is on the Hidell money order (per multiple handwriting analysts---all of whom were total boobs or incompetents or liars, per people like DiEugenio).
>> Klein's stamp is on the back of the M.O.
>> A File Locator Number is on the M.O. (which is ONLY put there AFTER the M.O. has gone to the FRB).
>> The M.O. is found just where it should be found (per CD75) on 11/23/63---the Federal Records Center in Alexandria/Washington.
>> The "bleed thru" issue is now a total NON-issue, as proven by Tim Brennan (via his pointing out the "No Bleed-Thru" status that exists in the M.O. as seen in Cadigan Exhibit No. 11.)
But all of the above is FAKE/FRAUDULENT, per many CTers.
You're fighting a losing battle, CTers. The money order was handled by Lee Harvey Oswald, Klein's Sporting Goods, and the Federal Reserve Bank. Maybe it's time for conspiracy theorists to accept that fact.
ALBERT DOYLE SAID:
Even if the Money Order turns out to be processed with Oswald's handwriting on it, the situation involves 2 Oswalds being worked as a team. One Oswald could have been used to set-up the other and the rifle could still be worked around the Oswald who was being set-up.
I don't think Von Pein realizes how easy the Money Order evidence could fit this scenario. Von Pein doesn't understand (or pretends not to) that the Money Order could have been sent but sent in a way where it was covertly worked around the normal flagging triggers in the system.
Everything Oswald did was Intel-guided after he came back from Russia.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
In other words --- If one stupid, unproven conspiracy theory falls flat on its face, CTers will merely insert another stupid conspiracy theory to take its place.
Nice policy!
JIM HARGROVE SAID:
Warren Commission loyalists want us to believe that this uncashed, unendorsed money order is legitimate proof of purchase by “A. Hidell” of a rifle that was shipped to Hidell via a Dallas P.O. Box under the name of “Oswald,” contrary to U.S. postal regulations, for a price of… well… first it was $12.78 for a rifle without a scope as pointed out by dozens of American dailies for nearly a week after the assassination.
As one example of many, a Nov. 23 article by the New York Times wire service, picked up in daily newspapers in many cities, including the Nov. 24 Salt Lake Tribune, reported the following: “Handwriting, analyzed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Washington as Oswald's on an assumed-name order to a Chicago mail order house last March 20 for a $12.78 rifle, similar to the assassination weapon.”
When the saga of Dial Ryder and the scope didn't pan out, the FBI apparently lost all its reports of a $12.78 rifle without a scope. But, like magic, "Oswald's handwriting" suddenly appeared on a new and improved money order, this time for $21.45 for a rifle with a scope.
A magic money order to purchase a magic rifle that shot magic bullets. It was truly an age of miracles!
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Jim,
There's no "magic" or "miracles" of any kind involved here at all. And there's no sinister or underhanded cover-up involved either. The reason why the media was reporting the $12.78 cost for the rifle (sans the scope) was quite simple --- they were simply referring to the Klein's ads that were currently running in various magazines in November of 1963. Between the time Oswald ordered his rifle in March '63 and the time of the assassination eight months later, the price of the Italian carbine (without the scope attached) in the Klein's advertisements had decreased by 10 cents, from $12.88 to $12.78.
And it's highly unlikely that any of the people in the press still had ready access to any Klein's magazine ads from eight or nine months earlier. So they were merely reporting on the CURRENT price of the gun in their TV and newspaper reports, without bothering to factor in the proper "With Scope" price. Big deal.
And even Dallas Police Chief Jesse Curry told reporters on 11/23/63:
"I believe the gun was supposed to cost twelve dollars and seventy-eight cents, I believe. I believe it was advertised in some magazine for that." (See the video clip below.)
As for any "new and improved money order, this time for $21.45 for a rifle with a scope" --- that's a lot of baloney too, because as early as 11/23/63, we find documentation showing that a money order that was definitely handled by Klein's Sporting Goods AND the First National Bank of Chicago in the amount of $21.45 was recovered at the Federal Records Center in Alexandria, Virginia, on the night of November 23rd, the day after the assassination. This documentation is all laid out in a goodly amount of detail in Commission Document #75 and Commission Document #87.
So, Jim Hargrove, do you think that the FBI and Secret Service reports that appear in CD75 and CD87 are phony documents of some kind? And do you think that a money order in the amount of $21.45 was NOT actually found at the Records Center in Alexandria at all?
DAVID VON PEIN LATER SAID:
Allow me to also add this general observation to these proceedings....
Even IF the First National Bank WAS "required" to place stamped markings on the Hidell money order, that still does not positively HAVE to mean the M.O. is a fake and a fraud. Under such circumstances, somebody at the bank could have just screwed up and failed to stamp the Hidell M.O.
Why is that NOT even a remote possibility in the eyes of CTers?
People foul up all the time. It couldn't be more common.
And I'll also remind everyone again of the following section of the banking regulations that were cited earlier (which is a segment taken from the 1969 regulations, but this might have also been in place in 1963 too; we haven't seen a "1963" manual or "circular" on this stuff as yet)....
"16. In the event a cash item is received by a Federal Reserve Bank from a sender without the endorsement thereon of such sender, the Federal Reserve Bank may present, send, or forward the item as if it bore such endorsement, or place on the item the name of such sender and the date of its receipt by the Federal Reserve Bank, or return the item to the sender for proper endorsement by the sender. This Bank makes the warranties stated in Section 210.6(b) of Regulation J by presenting, sending, or forwarding a cash item. These warranties arise whether or not such item bears the endorsement of this Bank."
ALBERT DOYLE SAID:
The information was gotten from [the] FBI for the Money Order on the 23rd.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Chief Curry's "order letter" announcement came at about 7 PM Dallas time on November 23rd. The money order was not found until approximately 9:35 PM EST (8:35 PM Dallas time). So the "$12.78" announcement made by Curry and fed to the media and newspapers was NOT being based on the discovery of the "money order". It was the "order letter" that had been found up to that point at 7 PM CST.
Now, I guess CTers who are bent on finding ANY inaccuracy at all to justify their staunch belief that the rifle transaction was totally fraudulent could complain about the amount shown on Oswald's "order letter" (i.e., the Klein's order form; CE773)--which was $19.95--not being released to the press by the FBI. But the $21.45 amount was a figure that Police Chief Jesse Curry was probably not aware of when he announced to the press in the DPD hallway at about 7:00 on Saturday night that the "FBI has the order letter for the rifle".
ALBERT DOYLE SAID:
Hargrove is saying [the] FBI deliberately reported the incorrect $12.78 price because they were adjusting for the phony Dial Ryder installation of a scope.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
But the FBI didn't even interview Dial Ryder until Monday, November 25th. So that theory is dead in the water before it ever gets off the ground.
From Ryder's WC testimony:
Mr. RYDER -- "I was interviewed by the FBI and Dallas Police Department and I believe a couple Secret Service men came out."
Mr. LIEBELER -- "Which one of those interviewed you first?"
Mr. RYDER -- "The FBI was the first one out."
Mr. LIEBELER -- "Do you remember what the date was when the FBI first interviewed you?"
Mr. RYDER -- "It was on Monday, the day of the funeral of President Kennedy."
JIM HARGROVE SAID:
David Von Pein can wave around CD75 and CD87 all he wants, but it is all fruit from the poisoned tree.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
They're documents from TWO separate entities --- the FBI and the Secret Service.
Did the Secret Service get together with the FBI guys to make sure they were on the same page regarding putting the $21.45 figure in both of their reports?
And then there's Waldman #7 too, which also shows the $21.45 figure, which perfectly matches the amount on the money order and the amounts shown in CD75 and CD87.
Waldman 7 was found in the Klein's files (as Bill Waldman confirms below). So, should I believe that William Waldman was part of the "conspiracy" too? Is there ANYBODY who wasn't trying to railroad Lee Harvey? ....
Mr. BELIN -- "I'm going to hand you what has been marked as Waldman Deposition Exhibit No. 7 and ask you to state if you know what this is."
Mr. WALDMAN -- "This is a copy made from our microfilm reader-printer of an order received by Klein's from a Mr. A. Hidell, Post Office Box No. 2915, in Dallas, Texas. I want to clarify that this is not the order, itself, received from Mr. Hidell, but it's a form created by us internally from an order received from Mr. Hidell on a small coupon taken from an advertisement of ours in a magazine."
Mr. BELIN -- "This Waldman Deposition Exhibit No. 7 is a print from the microfilm negative which we just viewed upstairs; is that correct?"
Mr. WALDMAN -- "That's correct."
TIM NICKERSON SAID:
I noted earlier in this discussion that Sandy Larsen seemed like a fairly intelligent guy. I now have to say that I was wrong in that assessment. The idiotic statements of his outweigh his punch hole analysis. His latest statement [HERE] is that the FBI prematurely announced that the order for the rifle showed the price to be $12.78. That of course is false, and anyone of even fair intelligence would realize that.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
I agree, Tim.
The post that made me want to re-think my assessment of Mr. Larsen's ability to properly and reasonably evaluate some of the evidence in the JFK case was a post Larsen made at The Education Forum concerning something he thought looked suspicious to him in the Altgens photo. Here's what I said about it a few days ago:
"After the recent fruitful discussions regarding Lee Oswald's now-proven-to-be-legitimate (IMO) U.S. Postal Money Order, I was beginning to think that Sandy Larsen was possibly one of the more reasonable conspiracy theorists out here on the Internet. But I guess I was wrong, especially after reading Sandy's "Everything's Been Faked" posts in this discussion about the head wounds, and even more so after reading this really bizarre post [below] written by Larsen concerning Doorway Man:
"When I look at the folks standing in the doorway in Altgens 6, it looks obvious to me that somebody pasted the profile of a man wearing a suit and tie just to Bill Lovelady's left. It looks pasted there because Lovelady is supposed to be standing in front of him, and yet part of him is in front of Lovelady, covering Lovelady's left cheek. Naturally I've wondered why somebody would do that. The only thing I can come up with is that they must have wanted to cover somebody up. If Oswald was standing in that location, that would explain the need for that." -- Sandy Larsen; December 11, 2015
So, it looks as if Mr. Larsen is firmly rooted in the "Virtually Every Piece Of Evidence In This Entire Case Has Been Faked And/Or Altered In Order To Frame Lee Harvey Oswald" camp after all. What a shame. ~sigh~"
-- DVP; 12/12/2015
TIM NICKERSON SAID:
The amount of authentication that we have for the money order is vast. It was vast before the issue came to the forefront six or seven weeks ago, and it's even moreso now. The fact that the Armstrongites continue to deny that authenticity just shows how out to lunch that they truly are.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Absolutely correct, Tim.
But even with a "File Locator Number" now identified on the Hidell money order, PLUS Lee Harvey Oswald's handwriting (per many handwriting analysts) being on the same money order, PLUS the Klein's stamp being on that same money order, PLUS the "Mar. 12, 1963" and "$21.45" post office stamps being exactly where they should be on that same money order....the conspiracy crowd still wants more proof to show that the M.O. is a legitimate document.
As far as most conspiracy theorists are concerned, it always seems to be the things that AREN'T there that become more important and valuable than the things that ARE present and accounted for. The bullets in the JFK case are another good example of this mindset possessed by many CTers. Per those conspiracists, it's the bullets that were never found or recovered that somehow become much more important when it comes to solving JFK's murder than the bullets that are in evidence.
Go figure.
ALBERT DOYLE SAID:
Do you understand that the Money Order could be processed, or partly processed, and still be 'handled' through the system in order to frame Oswald?
In other words, it could have a legitimate File Locator stamp and still be planted on Oswald in order to frame him.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
I love that constant moving of the goalposts by CTers.
Since it couldn't be more obvious that the Hidell money order now has a proper path to legitimacy (and conspiracy theorists like Albert Doyle know it), we're now treated to more sheer crackpot speculation about how the LEGITIMATE money order (with Oswald's writing on it that was bought and handled by Oswald HIMSELF) was being used to frame Oswald anyway.
The CTer mind is a spinning whirlwind of ever-expanding and forever changing concocted claptrap.
IOW --- Whatever it takes to pretend Lee Harvey Oswald was a patsy on 11/22/63, an Internet CTer is ready and eager to do it -- even if the number of goalposts that must be moved reaches triple digits.
DAVID HEALY SAID:
It's way beyond you now... nor can daBug help.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Yeah, that's right, Healy. It's now in the hands of people who make comments like the ones below....
"The "bleed-thru" of the ink is a strong indication that postal money order 2,202,130,462, shown as CE 788, was not original card stock." -- John Armstrong
"I mean the bleed through. I don't see how it can be ignored. It really does seem to me to be a big faux pas, one which the WC apparently swallowed. I mean can someone explain it innocently?" -- James DiEugenio
THE BLEED-THRU PROBLEM EXPLAINED
Is your faith in the Conspiracy Gods shaken by the above information, Mr. Healy? (Not even a tiny little bit?)
SANDY LARSEN SAID:
No claim was made by Armstrong other than the bleed-thru appearing to show that CE 788 was not original card stock. And the claim was factual at the time.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
No, it wasn't. Such a claim was never "factual". Are you joking?
Armstrong just never bothered to check out Cadigan No. 11 to do a comparison of the money order photographs. Neither did I. And neither did anybody else (that I know of) until Tim Brennan did such a direct comparison on December 5, 2015.
Do you think ALL rumors and sloppy research are "factual" until proven wrong, Sandy? If so, that's a mighty strange philosophy.
HENRY SIENZANT SAID:
Did you notice the point I made in post 309 that what Sandy Larsen provided says the money order only needs to be endorsed TO THE ORDER OF any bank, not BY the bank? And that the current money order appears to meet that specified criteria, as it is endorsed via that Klein's stamp PAYABLE TO THE ORDER OF THE FIRST NATIONAL BANK OF CHICAGO?
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
But, Hank, it also says this in that very same paragraph of the regulation....
"The endorsement of the sending bank should be dated and should show the American Bankers Association transit number of the sending bank in prominent type on both sides."
None of which is found on the CE788 Hidell money order.
But it's very likely (IMO) that the Hidell M.O. was part of a bulk transfer of postal money orders which was accompanied by a cash letter (deposit ticket), which very likely did have those stamps on it (i.e., the date and the ABA transit numbers).
To believe the Hidell M.O. is fraudulent at this stage in this lengthy thread/discussion is silly, especially when we KNOW it was found just exactly where it should have been found in Alexandria/Washington.
And we also have information in CD75 coming from a First National Bank Vice President (Wilmouth) verifying that First National DID handle the $21.45 Postal Money Order in question.
How many more years will conspiracy theorists completely ignore these important paragraphs found in Commission Document No. 75? ....
HENRY SIENZANT SAID:
Could the ABA number be the number specified on the Klein's stamp ("50 91144") right under the bank name?
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
William Waldman testified that that number was the Klein's "account number"....
DAVID BELIN -- "I hand you what has been marked as Commission Exhibit No. 788, which appears to be a U.S. postal money order payable to the order of Klein's Sporting Goods, and marked that it's from a purchaser named A. Hidell, and as the purchaser's street address is Post Office Box No. 2915, and the purchaser's City, Dallas, Tex.; March 12, 1963: and underneath the amount of $21.45, the number 2,202,130,462. And on the reverse side there appears to be an endorsement of a bank. I wonder if you would read that endorsement, if you would, and examine it, please."
WILLIAM J. WALDMAN -- "This is a stamped endorsement reading "Pay to the order of the First National Bank of Chicago," followed by our account number — 50 space 91144 — and that, in turn, followed by "Klein's Sporting Goods, Inc.""
MR. BELIN -- "Do you know whether or not that is your company's endorsement on that money order?"
MR. WALDMAN -- "It's identical to our endorsement."
DAVID VON PEIN ALSO SAID:
A "Money Order Timeline" summary....
Please note that there is solid evidence to support every step of the Hidell money order's journey --- from the post office in Dallas all the way to the document's final resting place at the Federal Records Center in Alexandria, Virginia (just outside Washington, D.C.)....
1.) The Dallas "G.P.O." Post Office handled the CE788 "Hidell" money order --- via the two stamps applied to the M.O. at the post office (i.e., the "Dallas, Tex.; G.P.O.; Mar. 12, 1963" stamp and the "$21.45" stamp that appear on the money order).
2.) The purchaser, Lee Harvey Oswald, handled the money order --- via the fact that Oswald's handwriting is on the document.
3.) Klein's Sporting Goods Company handled the money order --- via the Klein's "Pay To The Order Of The First National Bank Of Chicago" stamp on the back of the M.O.
4.) The First National Bank of Chicago handled the money order in question --- via the FBI interview with First National Bank Vice President Robert Wilmouth on November 23, 1963 [see CD75]. In that interview, Wilmouth verified that his bank received a $13,827.98 deposit from Klein's on 3/15/63, which contained a U.S. Postal Money Order in the amount of 21 dollars and 45 cents. Wilmouth also verified that the subject money order was sent to the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago on March 16, 1963.
5.) The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago handled the Hidell money order --- via the presence on the document of the ten-digit "File Locator Number" in the upper left corner, which is a number that is stamped on a money order (or check) only after it has reached a Federal Reserve Bank for processing.
6.) And the CE788 money order was recovered on November 23, 1963, by employees of the Federal Records Center in Alexandria, Virginia, which is precisely where approximately 75% of the U.S. Postal Money Orders were being sent for storage by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago in March of 1963 [see CD75, Page 669].
Now, if ALL of the above things are fake, fraudulent, or just a bunch of lies, then I think we can all agree that miracles are, indeed, possible.
SANDY LARSEN SAID:
Bulk deposits...have been made for at least the last fifty years. (Much longer than that, but I mean with the technology of the 1960s in place.) And checks are still being individually endorsed. So you're not making a good argument. Plus you haven't shown anything that indicates that bulk deposits didn't require individual bank stamps. You're just speculating it to be the case... and that is in spite of the evidence showing otherwise.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
But it's a solution to the "problem" that makes the most sense, IMO.
IF a United States Postal Money Order DID require the BOFD (Bank of First Deposit) to stamp the money order after the BOFD handled and processed it in circa 1963 (and I don't think anyone has established beyond all doubt that such stamps from the BOFD were definitely required when it comes to U.S. Postal Money Orders), then one of the following options must certainly be true....
The First National Bank employee(s) in Chicago had a massive brain cramp on 3/16/63 when they definitely DID process the Hidell money order (see CD75 again) but decided NOT to place a single individual stamp on the front or back sides of the Hidell M.O. (even though, per Sandy Larsen, they were definitely required to do so).
or:
The Hidell money order was faked by unknown conspirators in an effort to make it look as though Lee Harvey Oswald had purchased a 6.5-millimeter Italian carbine from Klein's Sporting Goods in March 1963.
And if that last option is the accurate solution, then we must accept the idea, as previously suggested in this discussion, that the person or persons who faked the M.O. were members of the "BRILLIANT ONE MINUTE AND TOTAL BOOBS THE NEXT" fraternity, because "they" faked the File Locator Number AND Oswald's handwriting AND the two post office bank stamps AND the Klein's "50 91144" stamp to utter perfection....but then they just FORGOT about all of those multiple stamped markings that Sandy Larsen says should definitely be present on the front and back sides of the money order that the unknown "they" were manufacturing as a patsy-framing device.
And I think that even you, Sandy, have expressed your opinion about how UNlikely the "patsy-framing device" scenario I just laid out above would be to accept.
But it's nice to know, via this post, that conspiracy theorist extraordinaire David Josephs does, in fact, believe in miracles. That's a handy piece of information to have (just for future reference). Thanks, David J.
Also (FWIW)....
Let me repeat something that Tim Nickerson posted many days ago, which is a Q&A exchange that someone had with a representative of BankersOnline.com:
Question:
If a check is payable to John Smith and Mary Smith, Settlers and Trustees of The John and Mary Smith Revocable Living Trust, is it sufficient to endorse the check with "For Deposit Only" and an account number? There are no markings or stamps on the back of the check from the depositary bank.
Answer:
That endorsement would be sufficient as long as it was deposited into a like-named account. The BOFD has provided you a warranty that this has happened and if it did not, you have recourse through the BOFD.
SANDY LARSEN SAID:
It [the "bulk deposits" solution] makes a lot of sense. But there is no indication (that I have seen) that it was ever done that way.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
But how can we (or anybody) possibly KNOW for certain it was never done that way in circa 1963? The ONLY example of a photograph showing a U.S. Postal Money Order that has been (allegedly) cashed, deposited, and fully processed in circa 1963 is the CE788 "Hidell" money order.
So we've got ONE single example to go by. And nothing more.
And since there are so MANY things that exist on that same money order that are telling me that the document is a legitimate one that was handled by Oswald and by Klein's and by the FRB and by the post office in Dallas on March 12, 1963 .... well, what should I do?
Should I merely pretend that ALL of those things that should be there (and ARE there) on the money order are fake? Or should I do a small bit of "assuming" and conclude that First National Bank in Chicago just maybe had a way of handling U.S. Postal Money Orders in early 1963 that eliminated the necessity of placing stamped markings on each and every one of them?
(Guess which option I'm going to embrace.)
LANCE PAYETTE SAID:
Look at [Regulation No.] 11 [also pictured below], specifically concerning PMOs. The regional FRB is nothing but a collection agent for the Postal Service. When the presenting bank presents a PMO, the regional FRB immediately credits the presenting bank and "simultaneously with such credit we will debit the amount of such money orders against the general account of the Treasurer of the United States under such symbol numbers as may be assigned by the Treasurer of the United States."
What purpose would "endorsing" a PMO to the regional FRB serve? None.
I don't doubt that PMOs were sometimes packaged separately and transmitted in bulk. But I don't believe they required any "endorsement" regardless of whether they were transmitted individually or in bulk. I believe the analysis of how a PMO was processed has been fundamentally misguided from the day Armstrong channeled the spirit of Wilmouth.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Thanks, Lance.
(My migraine is coming back. Oh, joy!)
DAVID VON PEIN ALSO SAID:
The File Locator Number is the PROOF that the Hidell CE788 money order made it through the banking system, and therefore also provides enough proof (at least for me and all other reasonable people) that the money order was handled and processed by the First National Bank of Chicago, which was the only other bank involved in this transaction. And we know that First National did handle the M.O., regardless of whether they placed any markings on the document or not, because FNB Vice President Bob Wilmouth told the FBI on 11/23/63 that his bank had received and processed the $13,000+ deposit from Klein's. And that deposit included a Postal Money Order in the amount of $21.45. (Do you REALLY think that the $21.45 PMO referred to by Wilmouth in Commission Document 75 was some OTHER money order instead of the "Hidell" M.O.? Come now.)
So the only way a "File Locator Number" gets stamped on that money order is if it had ALSO been handled by the First National Bank of Chicago and then sent to the FRB in Chicago.
The question that conspiracy theorists need to ask themselves now is ---
How did the 138 4159796 File Locator Number manage to get on the Hidell money order if it wasn't put there by a member of the Federal Reserve Bank?
As I've mentioned multiple times before, the authenticity of the CE788 money order has pretty much come full circle now — from the Dallas Post Office, to Oswald, to Klein's, to First National Bank in Chicago, to the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, and then to the storage facility at the Federal Records Center in Alexandria, Virginia. Plus, the "bleed-thru" question has also been thoroughly and logically explained in a non-conspiratorial way by Tim Brennan on 12/5/15. So the CTers can't continue to use the "bleeding" as an excuse to pretend the M.O. is phony.
It's hard to beat a "full circle" of authenticity like that one (even without a single FNB stamp adorning the back of the PMO). Conspiracy theorists, however, will no doubt continue to bellyache about the lack of any First National Bank markings on the money order — but the File Locator Number, along with Robert Wilmouth's 11/23/63 FBI interview which provides the verification that FNB in Chicago had the Hidell PMO in their possession in March of 1963, are things that effectively diminish the CTer whining to the mere whimpering of a defeated opponent who simply refuses to come to grips with the proven fact that the U.S. Postal Money Order known as Warren Commission Exhibit No. 788 is a genuine and legitimate piece of evidence that was used by Lee Harvey Oswald to purchase the rifle that ultimately killed President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963.
DAVID VON PEIN LATER SAID:
The excerpts from an "early manuscript" of John Armstrong's book that were quoted HERE in an August 2005 forum post written by Jack White include the four paragraphs below about Robert Wilmouth, but there is no source date for any interview done with Wilmouth. All we get is an "according to Wilmouth" declaration by Armstrong. (Ironically, it was Tom Scully who re-posted the Armstrong/White material in 2011. The same Tom Scully who now strongly supports the view that Armstrong is wrong and that the money order is a legitimate document.) ....
[Quoting John Armstrong...]
"Robert Wilmouth, Vice-President in the Operations Department of the First National Bank of Chicago, explained the process after which a postal money order was deposited to his bank (into Klein's account). Wilmouth said that when an item was received by First National, it had to be endorsed on the reverse side with the name and number of the account holder (the Klein's endorsement stamp).
Money order 2,202,130,462, when deposited, should have been routinely stamped and dated by the First National Bank of Chicago (ENDORSEMENT STAMP #1). It would then be sent to the Federal Reserve Bank in Chicago where it would again be stamped and dated (ENDORSEMENT STAMP #2). Finally, it would be sent to the central processing center in Kansas City where it would be again stamped and dated (ENDORSEMENT STAMP #3).
The $21.45 money order, according to Wilmouth, should have been stamped and dated by three different banking institutions. But not a single bank endorsement stamp or transaction date appears on either the front or back side of the postal money order. It is clear that postal money order No. 2,202,130,462 was never deposited or cashed by any bank or financial institution.
NOTE: Bank Vice-President Robert Wilmouth was never called to testify before the Commission. Wilmouth most certainly would have pointed out that the money order was never deposited to any financial institution due to a lack of bank endorsement stamps."
[End Quote.]
JAMES DiEUGENIO SAID:
Lance Payette's best friend has turned out to be David Von Pein.
As they say Birds of a Feather.
As for, let us call it, Payette's complaint, about where has everyone else gone; as I noted many moons ago, for reasons of time and psychology, I refuse to get into a constant back and forth with DVP anymore. It is simply stupid to argue with a zealot.
Sandy is doing us all a very good service by arguing with them both.
As for me, I go back to my original argument: if everything about a transaction is dubious, from A to Z, it is illogical to assume that one last step in the process is genuine. And that is what DVP and Payette want you to believe. Which is why they avoid almost everything else. In fact they do not even want to bring it up. But from Oswald's time cards covering everything that morning...
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
I think it's quite possible that Oswald went to the post office and purchased his money order BEFORE he went to work on March 12th. But other possibilities certainly exist as well, as Gary Mack speculated about in this e-mail to me in 2011:
"True, there's no evidence showing Oswald to have been anywhere but J-C-S [Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall] that day, but do his time sheets list his working hours AND breaks - including lunch - NO. Of course not, they just show that he was paid to be at J-C-S for a full day.....and he was. As for Oswald's J-C-S times sheet, researcher Mary Ferrell, whom I had great respect for, wrote, "OSWALD'S time sheet for March 12 is evidence that he probably lied sometimes about his hours. On the day he ordered the rifle, he signed in from 8:15 a.m. [sic; the time sheet actually says "8:00 AM", not 8:15] to 5:15 p.m., (Exhibit no. 1855, Vol. 23, p. 605)." She then wrote that the post office opened at 8am, after noting Harry Holmes' testimony that the envelope was mailed in the early morning. The simple fact that Marina and Marguerite both admitted back then and for years later — I've heard the story directly from both women — that he posed for pictures with the guns he ordered trumps everything else." -- Gary Mack; March 25, 2011
JAMES DiEUGENIO SAID:
...to the fact that no one admits giving him the rifle...
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
You expect way too much from the post office clerks eight months after one of them handed a package to a person who was—at the time in March of '63—just one of hundreds of ordinary people who picked up packages at that post office that same day.
JAMES DiEUGENIO SAID:
...and that the postal regs would not allow him to get the rifle...
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Well, Jim, I guess you should really be scolding the bumbling patsy framers—yet again—for still another stupid error on their part. The alleged plotters were trying desperately (from the look of things that you claim are "bogus") to make it look as though Lee Harvey Oswald ordered and took possession of Rifle C2766 in March of 1963, and yet they rigged the evidence in such a way so that it would have been impossible (legally) for the patsy to have obtained the "Hidell"-ordered Mannlicher-Carcano through the postal system?
Oh, those brilliant conspirators!
JAMES DiEUGENIO SAID:
...and every step in between--this evidentiary trail is bogus. Including THE FACT THAT IT'S THE WRONG RIFLE!!
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
And no matter how many times I point Jimbo to the reasonable explanation which reconciles this "rifle length" discrepancy (linked again HERE), DiEugenio will still insist the discrepancy has never once been explained in a logical manner. Go figure.
Jim, don't you think maybe it's time for conspiracy theorists like yourself to finally shed at least a couple of the conspiracy myths that were debunked and/or fully explained in non-conspiratorial ways years ago? Such as your silly "Wrong Rifle" canard.
And the "Postal Zone 12" theory is very likely another myth that should be dumped at sea as well. Here's why.
JON G. TIDD SAID:
Knowing that the Hidell PMO appears to be a fake, based on verifiable facts, tells me there's something rotten; something the Warren Commission, the HSC[A], and the ARRB should have considered.
JAMES DiEUGENIO SAID:
Armstrong is coming. Guns blazing.
Jon [Tidd] is correct.
And he is also right in asking why on earth did the HSCA or the ARRB never investigate this?
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Why on Earth would they have felt any NEED to investigate such a stupid claim regarding alleged fakery of the Hidell/Oswald money order? As far back as 1964, everybody in officialdom already knew the money order was totally legitimate. And that's because they knew it had Lee Harvey Oswald's very own handwriting all over the front of it, plus the Klein's stamp which proves that Klein's handled it, plus the fact it was found in the exact spot where it should have been found on 11/23/63. What more did they need?
It's only the obsessive conspiracy theorists of the world who have the slightest desire to pursue this subject to the ends of the Earth. And that's because they'll do anything they can--no matter how far-fetched--in order to take that rifle out of the hands of the man who obviously purchased it, Lee H. Oswald.
And the ARRB's job certainly wasn't to "investigate" anything anyway. (Doug Horne's crazy notions notwithstanding.) Why in the world they took ANY testimony from any witnesses is still a mystery to me. There was no need for it whatsoever.
But this fascination that many CTers continue to have with "Money Order Fakery" isn't surprising to me in the least. I pretty much could have predicted months ago that most of the hardcore Internet conspiracy theorists would never actually have the balls to come out and admit they were wrong about the money order being fraudulent. Because if they were to do that, it would force them to re-examine a few other things relating to Oswald's rifle purchase, such as the order form (CE773) that Oswald sent to Klein's to buy the rifle, plus Waldman Exhibit No. 7, which proves that Klein's did ship the C2766 rifle to Oswald's very own post office box in Dallas and also proves that Klein's did receive payment from a certain "A. Hidell" in the amount of $21.45 via a money order on March 13, 1963.
And if U.S. Postal Money Order #2,202,130,462 is a real and legitimate document that was handled by Lee Harvey Oswald and was mailed to Klein's Sporting Goods by Lee Harvey Oswald, then where can the conspiracy theorists go with the idea that all of that other stuff relating to the same rifle purchase is somehow fake and fraudulent?
In short, if that money order is the real deal, then Lee Harvey Oswald did order a rifle from Klein's Sporting Goods in 1963. And many conspiracists just don't like that idea at all. Right, Mr. DiEugenio?
SANDY LARSEN SAID:
I've noticed in the postal money order debate that [Tommy Graves] agrees with nearly anyone who presents an argument that bank stamps weren't required on PMOs in 1963. Maybe you believe they were never required. I've given documentary proof that they were required. .... I just want to understand why you pick the less likely of two choices.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
If you don't mind my interjection here....
Given all the things that ARE present and accounted for on the Hidell PMO (including Oswald's own handwriting, the Klein's stamp, and the File Locator Number), I think the most reasonable conclusion to reach is that it must NOT have been a mandatory requirement for the Hidell Postal Money Order to be stamped by the First National Bank of Chicago (regardless of the "documentary proof" previously supplied by Mr. Sandy Larsen).
There are just too many things about the Hidell PMO that are proving beyond all reasonable doubt, in my opinion, that it is a legitimate document that was handled by every person or company or bank that should have handled it if it had been properly handled and processed in 1963.
So I guess a good question to ask conspiracy theorists at this point might be this question:
How many things that appear to be legitimate about the Hidell money order does it take for a stubborn CTer to admit that the money order is, in fact, very likely a legitimate document?
I also have little doubt that even if a few First National Bank markings had been stamped on the Hidell PMO, there would still be a dedicated group of conspiracists who would continue to claim that the PMO is a fake, with those CTers merely adding any and all FNB endorsements to their list of things that were forged by the unnamed plotters who were allegedly framing Lee Harvey Oswald.
LANCE PAYETTE SAID ALL THIS.
SANDY LARSEN SAID:
It is easy to prove today -- right now -- that a bank stamp on a cash letter (bulk deposit slip) wasn't the way things were done in the 1960s.
For the sake of argument, let's suppose that cash items were NOT stamped individually, because it was done on the cash letter. If that were the case, then how would you explain check #7419 on this page?
On the reverse side of the check you can see the FRB Chicago stamp (rectangular), so you know the check was processed by a Federal Reserve Bank. And you can see two bank stamps for Fort Worth National Bank (one is a hexagon and the other a rectangle with a decorative border). Since this is a national bank, it was the one that submitted the check to FRB Chicago.
Why are those bank stamps there, David?? When one stamp on the cash letter would have sufficed?
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Probably because you're talking about CHECKS and not POSTAL MONEY ORDERS in that example, Sandy. That's why. Big difference. The First National Bank of Chicago very likely handled Postal Money Orders differently (in bulk) than they did checks.
JON G. TIDD SAID:
If you're a banker in 1963 and a PMO is presented to your institution for credit to the presenting party, you're going to look for either an endorsement or a bank stamp on the PMO from the party presenting the PMO to you.
It's just that simple.
If the party presenting the PMO to you hasn't endorsed or stamped the PMO, you aren't going to credit (pay) the amount of the PMO to the presenting party. Not if you value your job. Not if you are competent. Not unless you don't give a F***.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Even if you KNOW the PMO was sent to you by the presenting party?
And even if you KNOW, via the Klein's stamp, that the PMO was handled and endorsed properly by the payee?
You're wrong, Jon. It's just that simple.
ROBERT PRUDHOMME SAID:
DVP just doesn't get it, Jon, and he never will.
There are none so blind as those who will not see.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Bob,
As far as I'm concerned, the Klein's stamp ALONE is absolute proof the money order is genuine and legit. (And that's not even counting Oswald's own handwriting being on the damn thing too.)
How could it NOT be legitimate with that stamp on it? You think somebody swiped one of the rubber stamps out of the Klein's offices in Chicago?
SANDY LARSEN SAID:
It's easy to have a rubber stamp made, David. Have you never had one made?
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
And the plotters just happened to know Klein's First National account number too, eh Sandy?
And the plotters just happened to know the exact line structure and design and layout of the Klein's rubber stamp, right?
Or do you think somebody at Klein's was in on the plot and supplied all the info about the Klein's rubber stamp (or supplied the conspirators with an actual rubber stamp from the Klein's offices)?
Now, yes, I suppose EVERYTHING relating to the money order COULD possibly have been faked to perfection to simulate the real McCoy --- e.g., the post office stamps, LHO's writing, the Klein's stamp, and the File Locator Number --- but just HOW MANY things that SEEM to be genuine do you think were faked (or likely to be faked) by the band of conspirators who were allegedly framing Oswald? Is there any limit?
THOMAS GRAVES SAID:
If Kleins was out of 36" carbines, it was better business practice, for their own profit and customer-satisfaction wise, for them to send Hidell, or whomever, a 40.2" rifle rather than nothing at all.
TOM NEAL SAID:
A Carbine was ordered, not a standard length rifle. You [Thomas Graves] are presuming that a longer rifle would be as good or better for the purchaser. Would a business assume this? Perhaps someone who ORDERS a carbine WANTS a carbine, or they would have ordered a standard length. They run the risk of paying return postage if the customer is not satisfied. In what way is this better for Klein's profit and customer satisfaction?
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Friendly reminder:
Whether Klein's was advertising the 36-inch weapon or the 40-inch variant of the rifle, Klein's still classified them BOTH as a "CARBINE". The proof is in the ads themselves. It says "Carbine" clear as day in both the 36-inch and 40-inch ads:
SANDY LARSEN SAID:
You're right. So what we have to say is that a person ordering a 36" carbine is expecting a 36" carbine.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Sure. But Oswald very likely never noticed the (four-inch) difference after getting his 40-inch rifle in the mail from Klein's.
TOM NEAL SAID:
There is no evidence that Klein's was out of 36" carbines.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Only if you want to totally ignore the fact that we KNOW that Klein's stopped advertising the 36-inch rifle at just about the same time Oswald placed his order with Klein's in March. So it seems quite clear, via the Klein's ads that appeared in American Rifleman and other magazines after February 1963, that Klein's WAS running out of the 36-inchers at approximately the time of the Oswald/Hidell order.
The "evidence" that Tom Neal is looking for is available in the Klein's ads themselves. Here's the list of Klein's ads, supplied by Gary Mack in 2010, that appeared in American Rifleman magazine in the year 1963:
Jan 63 -- p. 61 -- 36-inch “6.5 Italian Carbine” -- $12.88 -- $19.95 (with scope)
Feb 63 -- p. 65 -- Same ad as above
Mar 63 -- No ad
Apr 63 -- p. 55 -- 40-inch “6.5 Italian Carbine” -- $12.88 -- $19.95 (with scope)
May 63 -- Missing pp. 63-66
Jun 63 -- p. 59 -- 40-inch “6.5 Italian Carbine” -- $12.88 -- $19.95 (with scope)
Jul 63 -- p. 67 -- 40-inch “6.5 Italian Carbine” -- $12.78 -- $19.95 (with scope)
Aug 63 -- p. 79 -- Same ad as above
Sep 63 -- p. 89 -- Same ad as above
Oct 63 -- p. 85 -- Same ad as above
Nov 63 -- No ad
Dec 63 -- No ad
LANCE PAYETTE SAID THIS.
JON G. TIDD SAID:
I say, let's see these records:
-- the record showing the Post Office paid Treasury for the PMO.
-- the record showing the Fed charged the Treasury for the PMO.
-- the record showing the FRB of Chicago credited First National Bank of Chicago for the PMO.
Challenge to DVP: Provide just one of these records, just one, and I'll back whatever you write here. Why? Because for me the Hidell PMO is a smoking gun, perhaps the only provable smoking gun. Federal financial records are a far different kettle of fish from eyewitness accounts, autopsy materials, dictabelt recordings, biographies, and other matters subject to opinion and interpretation. Federal financial records are granite. Immutable. Pristine.
JON G. TIDD LATER SAID:
I've made a good offer to DVP. He hasn't accepted it. Not because he is at fault. But because he cannot accept my offer.
There is no provable payment chain to the Hidell PMO.
This means the Hidell PMO never moved through the banking system to the Post Office.
Think about it: A. Hidell allegedly sent a PMO to Klein's as payment for an M-C rifle. Fine. Klein's endorsed the PMO for deposit into its account at First National Bank of Chicago. Fine. End of story, except for an FRB routing number which means nothing, that's nothing, in 1963. Nothing when not accompanied by First's stamp. Nothing. There is no proof, none whatsoever, First got credited for its payment to Klein's.
Sleep well, CT'ers. DVP will never produce facts showing I'm wrong.
Sleep well, CTers. The Hidell PMO is a provable fraud. Which proves the Oswald-did-it-alone thesis of the Warren Report is provably false. Not arguably false. Provably false.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Jon,
Are you actually suggesting that you have provided PROOF that the Hidell money order is a "fraud"?
Really?
You must be joking.
Please tell me, Jon, how the presence of a stamp placed on the Hidell PMO by the First National Bank of Chicago would prove that First National "got credited for its payment to Klein's"?
Even if such a bank stamp had been on the Hidell money order, it certainly wouldn't be proof that First National got credited for the $21.45 face value of the PMO. Such a stamp would have been put on the PMO by First National itself, not by the Federal Reserve Bank.
Seems to me that the File Locator Number, placed on the money order by the Federal Reserve Bank AFTER the PMO had been handled by both Klein's and First National Bank, is a very strong indication that First National was, indeed, credited for the money order.
I also find it very humorous that Jon G. Tidd seems to think that the lack of a bank stamp on the back of the money order somehow completely dismantles this huge pile of accumulated evidence that all points toward Lee Harvey Oswald as the sole assassin of President Kennedy.
That's one hell of a powerful Postal Money Order, huh?
GREG BURNHAM SAID:
Jon ... I commend both you and Sandy for advancing impeccably cogent arguments built on solid evidence regarding the PMO issue.
Again, the application of Occam's Razor to the equation is instructive. The simplest explanation that is adequate to the evidence is preferable to that which is unnecessarily complex.
In my experience with LN's, I have found that they will cling to unreasonably complex solutions in order to avoid conceding even the mere possibility, let alone reality, of conspiracy, irrespective of facts to the contrary.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
This is hilarious (in the usual Pot/Kettle sense of ironic arguments advanced by conspiracy theorists).
Greg Burnham is actually suggesting via the above quote that the LNers who believe that the Hidell money order is a real and genuine document are placing their belief in something that is "unreasonably complex".
So Greg is actually saying in this instance regarding the Postal Money Order that the belief that something ISN'T fake is far more of an "unreasonably complex solution" than the belief that the item in question IS a fake.
Greg has things backward (as per the CTer norm). Because in order to believe that the PMO is a fraud involves believing in a FAR more "unreasonably complex solution" than the LNers' belief that the Postal Money Order is simply what it appears to be -- i.e., a perfectly normal and legitimate and non-sinister financial instrument that was utilized by Lee Harvey Oswald to pay for a rifle that he ordered from Klein's Sporting Goods in March of 1963.
But the belief that the PMO is a fraud means that virtually everything connected to the money order was manufactured by conspirators --- from Oswald's handwriting, to the Klein's stamp, to the 10-digit number stamped on the front of the PMO, etc.
And yet I'm supposed to think, per what Greg Burnham just said above, that such mass fakery is MORE of a reasonable conclusion to reach—and a less complex one—than a conclusion that involves no fakery at all.
Incredible topsy-turvy logic there.
William of Ockham just had a stroke!
GREG BURNHAM SAID:
There is (almost literally) nothing that DVP has ever written that I hold to be true.
In order to accept that the PMO was handled properly, we must choose to reinvent the entire financial instrument practices of the US banking system! Now THAT is complex.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Yeah, Greg. Either that, or we could....
Merely accept the amazing and incredible notion that Gregory Burnham doesn't know as much as he thinks he does about the process by which United States Postal Money Orders were handled and processed by U.S. banking institutions (like the First National Bank of Chicago, Illinois) in the year nineteen hundred and sixty-three.
Guess which option is more likely to be the accurate one?
JON G. TIDD SAID:
Awhile back on another thread, DVP agreed that if there was a conspiracy, that's a big if, the conspirators would stop at nothing.
Now DVP argues that because falsifying the Hidell PMO involved many falsifications, it's ludicrous to believe the PMO was falsified.
DVP can't have it both ways. If anything, falsifying the PMO is proof the conspirators would stop at nothing.
What indicates the PMO is falsified? Certainly not the front of the PMO. Certainly not Klein's stamp. Those things look for real. Maybe they were forged, but they look for real. What's not real is the absence of First National Bank's stamp.
[...]
Why is a bank stamp or individual endorsement important?
The stamp or endorsement warrants to all higher in the payment chain that all signatures prior to and including the stamp or endorsement are genuine.
Breach of warranty = liability. Thus, if you endorse a forged PMO, you can be stuck with a loss = PMO amount.
Financial institutions never have exposed themselves to such losses. They have for ages required an endorsement of the party asking for payment of an instrument such as a PMO or a check.
Don't subscribe to "conspiracy lite". Don't buy the idea there was a limit to what the conspirators would or could do.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
And yet they forgot that very important First National bank stamp on their forged PMO.
My, how careless.
BTW, Jon, who do you think it was who managed to plant the forged PMO in the exact place it needed to be planted in order to make it seem like the PMO completed a normal and non-conspiratorial journey through the American banking system?
Or do you think the man who found the processed money order at the Federal Records Center in Alexandria, Virginia—an employee of the National Archives and Records Service by the name of Robert H. Jackson (see Commission Document No. 87)—merely pretended to find the Hidell Postal Money Order at the Records Center near Washington?
Was Robert Jackson of the National Archives a big part of the plot to frame Lee Oswald with that $21.45 money order that you are so convinced is "a provable fraud" which "never moved through the banking system"?
Mr. Jackson must have been a huge part of the plot and frame-up, right Jon? Because if he wasn't, then Jackson really did find a Postal Money Order for $21.45 with the name "A. Hidell" on it at the Records Center storage facility near Washington on 11/23/63. And how could it have ended up there if it "never moved through the banking system"?
JAMES DiEUGENIO SAID:
Davey never asks any questions about all the steps to go ahead and mail the money order, or to process the money order or deposit the money order.
And BTW, that is really the giveaway in all this. Because the WC, if you can buy it--and you can--never asked any of those questions either!
I asked John [Armstrong] about this once: Is there any interview with the accounts receivable department chief? That is, the person who took on all the mailed-in checks and money orders and cash and sorted it and processed it and then sent it over to the bank?
He said no there is not. At least I cannot find it.
I said then, how did they know how often the messenger was sent over to make a deposit? I mean was it every day? Every other day? Was it when they hit a certain amount? And who was their contact there? Since they had seven stores, they must have been VIP clients. Therefore, there must have been a protocol. John said, I have never seen any of that.
I said, John, you know what makes that so odd? Belin and Liebeler were not criminal lawyers. They were business lawyers. They had to have known all this and yet they never did any research to find out the answers to these questions. John said, yep I know Jim, it's really unbelievable. But it's the WC.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
No, it's just that David W. Belin and Wesley J. Liebeler had the common sense (and rational way of thinking about the evidence) that people like James DiEugenio and John Armstrong sorely lack.
I.E.,
Belin and Liebeler knew that there wasn't even the SLIGHTEST chance that the paper trail for Oswald's rifle purchase had been faked or artificially manufactured by a band of brain-dead conspirators.
How did they know this for certain?
Because of the many things that prove the paper trail was legitimate and genuine. Such as: Oswald's verified writing on various pieces of that paper trail (including the money order and the CE773 order form). Plus, the Klein's "Pay To The Order" stamp on the back of the money order. Plus Waldman Exhibit No. 7. Plus the fact that Belin and Liebeler knew for a fact that the money order had been located in just exactly the place where it should have been found if it had been processed properly--in Alexandria.
Therefore, why would David Belin and Wesley Liebeler (or the WC) have felt there was any NEED to jump through the ridiculous hoops that DiEugenio is suggesting those men should have definitely jumped through?
Answer -- There was no need for such hoop-jumping, because of all the things that just SCREAMED out Lee Harvey Oswald purchased this rifle from Klein's!
LANCE PAYETTE SAID:
With the caveat that I have read only the original post in this thread and John Armstrong’s latest write-up, I would note the following:
- Without explanation or apology, Armstrong has tap-danced away from the “Wilmouth statement” on which "Harvey and Lee" (and subsequent researchers) had relied as the sole authority for the assertion that the postal money order should have multiple bank stamps. Nothing of the sort is now attributed to Wilmouth.
- Indeed, nothing of the sort is now attributed to anyone. Instead, Armstrong’s write-up simply assumes that the money order should have multiple bank stamps. The "failure" of Belin and Waldman to notice the absence of these stamps that the money order “should” have had is deemed “suspicious.” For you fans of logic (there are surely some of you out there, are there not?), this is the fallacy known as “assuming that which is to be proven.”
- Armstrong’s write-up completely ignores the File Locator Number – ignores not merely its significance but its very existence. How seriously should we take a researcher who obsesses over the minutiae that Armstrong does but blithely ignores the smoking elephant on the face of the money order?
- In other threads, we were assured that Armstrong was going to rehabilitate his theory by explaining both his seeming fabrication of the Wilmouth statement and why the File Locator Number does not have the dispositive significance it might appear to have. Moreover, we were assured that Armstrong would soon produce a highly experienced bank executive who would verify that the money order should have multiple bank stamps and explain to us dolts how the process actually works. I failed to note any of this in his write-up.
- Armstrong also makes much of the fact that the envelope in which the money order was mailed bears a Zone 12 postmark that places it miles from the post office where the money order was purchased. I happen to have had a recent experience where my sister-in-law mailed my wife a birthday card in an envelope that was postmarked Phoenix, AZ 85012 (and only Phoenix). I didn’t think she'd been anywhere near Phoenix and asked her where she had mailed it. She had dropped it in a mailbox at a small town about 20 miles west of Tucson, more than 100 miles from Phoenix – but the only stamp was for zip code 85012 in the middle of Phoenix. A fair guess would be that Oswald took the money order back to his workplace and put the envelope with his employer’s outgoing mail, as many of us have done, or perhaps dropped it in some nearby mailbox that happened to be processed at the post office in Zone 12.
One who is not a certified conspiracy loon cannot help but notice that Armstrong repeatedly fills in the gaps in his latest write-up with his “belief” that items were “fabricated” or are “suspicious.” If one begins with the axiom that one’s theory must be correct, then one will inevitably find everything that doesn’t mesh with said theory to be “fabricated” or “suspicious.”
For you fans of logic, Armstrong has committed the fallacy of “proving too much.” He has concocted such a Rube Goldbergian conspiracy that I, at least, was unable to read his latest write-up without laughing out loud.
Surely even the most wild-eyed conspiracy theorists don’t really believe that a conspiracy to purchase a rifle by mail using a postal money order eight months before the assassination could possibly involve so many conspirators and elements and make so little sense from start to finish?
JON G. TIDD SAID:
Lance, are you a lawyer admitted to a state bar?
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
What difference does it really make, Jon? Even if Lance Payette has no connection to the law profession whatsoever, every single thing he said in his last post still makes perfect (logical) sense. (At least to me it does.)
As for the "Zone 12" red herring....
Even if the "12" on CE773 (the envelope used by Oswald to mail his rifle order to Klein's) is a Dallas postal zone code -- and I'll admit that it could conceivably be a zone code (although as I demonstrate HERE, there's a very good chance that the "12" does not represent "Zone 12" in Dallas, Texas) -- why on Earth would that have to mean that the person who dropped that piece of mail in a mailbox must have mailed it inside "Zone 12" in Dallas?
Why couldn't an alternate possibility be that Oswald mailed it at the Main Post Office in Dallas and then the letter was moved by the Dallas Post Office employees to "Zone 12" for processing, and then the postmark was stamped on the envelope (after the mailman moved it to "Zone 12")? Why is that possibility not even considered to be remotely plausible by JFK conspiracy theorists? ~shrug~
JIM HARGROVE SAID:
Or perhaps an alternate alternate possibility is that Oswald never left work the morning he was supposed to have mailed the Magic Money Order to Klein's, as shown in this Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall work product from March 12, 1963.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
It's quite possible that Oswald went to the post office on March 12th BEFORE he ever went to work at Jaggars that day. That's the most likely answer, IMO. And Gary Mack, five years ago, hinted at that possibility too....
Subject: RE: Buying the Money Order
Date: 3/12/2011 11:01:42 AM Eastern Standard Time
From: Gary Mack
To: David Von Pein
Dave,
Oswald could have left JCS [Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall] at any time between 8am and 10:30 IF there was no work for him to do. Oswald was given simple tasks as they came in, so if no orders were waiting, all he could do was sit and wait.....and get paid for doing so.
I assume he'd have to check with his supervisor about taking a few minutes to go to the post office, but his time card certainly does not confirm that he was on the job every single minute. It merely shows that he was at the office and "on the clock" all day.
And maybe, just maybe, he went over there on JCS business? Or perhaps a co-worker — his supervisor? — also needed something from the PO so Oswald went and took advantage of the opportunity? In short, there are many reasons Oswald's PO visit was entirely legitimate.
It would not surprise me to learn that the Main Post Office opened at 7am, but I don't know that to be the case. I'd have to check the 1963 directories, but I sort of remember doing that years ago. Anyway, I can take a look when I get back to the office on Monday.
Gary
--------------------
Subject: Main Post Office hours
Date: 3/17/2011 5:28:21 PM Eastern Daylight Time
From: Gary Mack
To: David Von Pein
Hi Dave,
None of the directories at the Museum show the hours at the main post office in Dallas in 1963. However, the USPS online search service shows the main distribution center today opens at 7am. But that building wasn’t there in 1963. The main post office, and presumably the distribution center, was at 400 N. Ervay in 1963 and it would likely have had the early business hours. The Ervay PO is the one that was just a few blocks from J-C-S which was located at 522 Browder. According to Google maps, the two are only 8 blocks, or ½ mile, apart.
Oswald could have walked or run, or probably ridden the bus, since Ervay was a main north-south street. For that matter, he could have bummed a ride from a co-worker.
In short, I don’t see anything that prevents Oswald from getting to the post office, then buying and sending his money order to Klein’s.
As to why the envelope is postmarked in a different zone [it probably wasn't, as discussed here], I have no clue, but there’s no evidence such a practice was out of the ordinary.
Gary
SCOTT KAISER SAID:
If there's no bank endorsement, then it's a forgery, it's as simple as that, there's no arguing the facts.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Absolute nonsense, Scott. There are multiple other explanations without having to constantly resort to "forgery".
Question for you, Scott....
How did the Klein's "Pay To The Order" stamp get on the back of the Hidell money order if that money order was never handled by anyone at Klein's Sporting Goods in Chicago?
Do you think the Klein's stamp is a "forgery" too? Even though Bill Waldman testified that the stamp on the M.O. is "identical to our endorsement."
[7 H 367]
And what about Oswald's handwriting? Should I believe that LHO's writing on the M.O. is a "forgery" too? Even though handwriting specialist Alwyn Cole told the Warren Commission this:
"It is my conclusion that the handwriting on this money order is in the hand of the person who executed the standard writing [i.e., Lee Harvey Oswald]." [4 H 373]
How many things that appear to be kosher does it take to make an item cross over into the category of "Real and Legitimate"? Or is that a stupid question to ask a conspiracy believer?
JAMES DiEUGENIO SAID:
LOL
Uh, was not the FBI at Klein's all night on the evening of the 22nd?
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
EVIL FBI CONSPIRATOR -- "Hey, Bill [Waldman], can I borrow that Klein's rubber stamp that's on your desk? I need it so I can put a fake Klein's endorsement on this fake blank money order that another evil FBI conspirator swiped from the post office a couple of hours ago."
KLEIN'S VICE PRESIDENT WILLIAM J. WALDMAN -- "Yeah, sure. Anything I can do to help J. Edgar. Here you go."
FBI CONSPIRATOR -- "Thanks, Bill. I'll give it back to you in a few minutes, after I get through faking Oswald's handwriting and the post office markings and the File Locator Number and the punch holes that I've got to fake so that they line up perfectly with the phony $21.45 numerals that I'm faking on the money order too. So this might take a little while after all."
BILL WALDMAN -- "No problem. I never saw a thing. And don't forget about the massive amount of fakery you FBI guys need to do with the nonexistent documents that you're going to say you discovered in our Klein's files tonight too -- e.g., the Waldman No. 7 invoice and the Hidell order form and envelope. So you guys have got a lot of faking to do tonight. If you need me, I'll be in my office practicing the tissue of lies that I'll be needing to tell the Warren Commission in a few months. See ya."
SCOTT KAISER SAID:
David, now I know you can't be that naive. I use to own my own business, when we needed "rubber stamps", I'd ask my secretary to place a call in to a company that makes such items. Stamping a company name is not hard to do.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Well then, Scott, what's the point of even stamping ANYTHING on any check or money order? If EVERYTHING can possibly be faked (like rubber stamps and File Locator Numbers and all the things that were stamped on the front of the M.O. by the Dallas Post Office on 3/12/63), then it can never be proven that ANY check or money order that has ever been processed by any bank in the world is legit. Right?
So, I'll ask again --- at what point do the LEGITIMATE LOOKING THINGS on the document make you want to stop pretending everything's been put there by conspirators?
SCOTT KAISER SAID:
Finally you're now getting it. I know we have a pretty screwed up system, it's called government.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
What a nice convenient blanket excuse you've got there. Aren't you glad you can always fall back on that lame excuse, Scott? Lucky you.
DAVID VON PEIN LATER SAID:
I look at it this way....
If Sandy Larsen is 100% correct about bank endorsements being mandatory on the front and/or back of every single individual U.S. Postal Money Order that was deposited by First National Bank of Chicago in March 1963, then one of the following two things must have occurred....
1.) If the Hidell money order is a fake (and the plotters had any brains at all), then those plotters faking the PMO would have surely known that at least SOME First National Bank markings would need to be placed on the PMO if they wanted it to look "real" and "kosher". Right?
But the plotters not only failed to stamp the money order ONE time with a phony First National endorsement, but (per the FRB regulations cited by Sandy Larsen) those stupid conspirators omitted at least three or four separate FNB markings that should be on that money order -- including the date of the transaction and TWO separate ABA transit numbers.
Or:
2.) If the Hidell money order is legitimate and was not faked by anyone, then we'd have to believe that the First National Bank personnel just forgot to put at least 3 or 4 of their stamps on the Hidell money order before sending it along to the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
I ask --- How likely is it for EITHER one of the above two scenarios to be the true and accurate one? I'd say it's pretty UNlikely that either option is correct.*
Therefore, IMO, this is the likely solution....
"I would guess that the Hidell money order was probably "endorsed" as part of a bulk batch of U.S. Postal Money Orders sent by First National Bank to the Federal Reserve Bank in Chicago. All of the money orders in such a "bulk" transfer were going to be sent to the very same place--the FRB in Chicago, Illinois--so I can't see why a single stamped endorsement placed on a separate document (which would be attached to the bundle of bulk money orders being sent from First National to the FRB) wouldn't suffice in a bulk transaction like that, instead of having to stamp a separate endorsement on each and every money order. I do not know for certain if such a "single endorsement on bulk transfers" procedure was actually in place at major U.S. banks in 1963, but such a process makes perfect sense to me. And it would certainly save the bank a lot of "stamping" time too." -- DVP; December 3, 2015
* However, as unlikely as the "Bank Screwed Up" or the "Bank Forgot" theory might be, I will say this....
That "Screwed Up" theory is still MUCH more likely to be true than the nonsensical "Everything Connected To The Rifle Purchase Is Fake" theory.
"Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity [or incompetence]." -- Hanlon's Razor
SANDY LARSEN SAID:
David is making stuff up. He claims that the DEPOSIT SLIP was endorsed rather than the individual PMOs. (The deposit slip is called a "cash letter.") There is NO reason to believe this is true. There is ZERO evidence. Not even a SINGLE HINT of this has been seen ANYWHERE.
It's just DVP's theory.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
And yet, incredibly, apparently the plotters who allegedly faked the Hidell PMO must ALSO have believed in that same "theory" that DVP has endorsed, because those plotters decided to not place a single FNB marking on that phony Hidell PMO.
So, Sandy Larsen either believes in mind-boggling stupidity on the part of the conspirators.....or he'd have to put some stock in my theory about cash letters and bulk bank deposits.
Is there a third alternative, Sandy?
SANDY LARSEN SAID:
The cover-up artists didn't ask all the right questions of all the right people. Therefore, unknown to them, their forgery wasn't complete.
[...]
The First National Bank employees stamped items every day. The cover-up artists didn't forge PMOs every day.
JAMES DiEUGENIO SAID:
Both John [Armstrong] and I interviewed two long time bank supervisors, my guy was in LA, his woman was in Vegas.
Combined, they have about 70 years experience in banking.
John actually showed the supervisor a copy of the PMO, she did a double take. Sort of like: What the heck is that? She then said, "That has never been validated by anyone. It hasn't been through the system."
The guy I talked to, I wanted to get the direct answer to the crazy DVP/Lance thing that they made up about PMO's being treated differently than other forms of currency for validation purposes. So I asked him that direct question. I said are PMO's treated any differently by you as they pass through the bank than say checks or other money orders. He said no they are not.
Now, recall, today things are a bit different because of the use of computers and sensors.
But back then, you did not have those things. Therefore everything was manually tabulated and stamped.
And I am old enough to recall that I got these things back at the end of the month in an envelope from the bank.
To me, this is simply a non starter now. DVP can make up whatever he wants at his Grimm Brothers site. But...this is decided.
Oswald did not send that money order. In a court of law, it would be demolished.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
To Scott Kaiser:
I thought you were trying to say [in this post] that you thought the plotters were "incompetent". But you (incredibly) think that the plotters KNEW that there SHOULD be 3 or 4 FNB stamps on the money order (as you alluded to in this post), but they decided to take a chance and NOT put any of them on the PMO, because it would create another line of inquiry that they didn't want. So they just hoped nobody would notice (or care) that the 3 or 4 FNB markings were nowhere to be found on a PMO that they surely wanted to make people think was real and genuine.
Gotcha.
Thanks.
JON G. TIDD SAID:
Once again, DVP: Merely show through a bank statement that First [National Bank] credited Klein's for a $21.45 deposit in mid-March 1963 (i.e., the A. Hidell PMO), and I'll shut up permanently. Forever. A bank statement.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
What good would that do you, Jon? You mean you'd actually believe that such a bank statement, should it ever be produced, wasn't capable of being faked or manufactured by conspirators?
I'm amazed that you'd accept such a "bank statement" as proof of anything. Very few Internet CTers would.
LANCE PAYETTE SAID:
Come on, people, this is just silly. At least insofar as the money order is concerned, Armstrong and his sycophants are weaving a fantasy out of whole cloth. I believe people are dazzled by the sheer volume of information presented by Armstrong and aren't willing to do the hard work of checking out what he says.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
And you can also see how easy it is for conspiracy believers, eager to "find" a conspiracy, to concoct and construct a conspiracy theory or a "cover-up" tailored to their needs. This Money Order topic being a perfect example. There were some discrepancies about "Kansas City vs. Washington", so CTers concoct a "second" money order which conveniently "disappears". When, in fact, there was no "second" money order at all. Just the one, found in Alexandria/Washington.
The exact same type of CTer concoction has occurred with respect to a lot of the other evidence in the JFK case too -- such as the mystery "Mauser" rifle (which never existed, of course) and the alleged bullet that many CTers are convinced fell off of Governor Connally's stretcher in Parkland Hospital and was then deep-sixed by evil plotters. No such bullet exists--and it never did (of course). It's the product of pure invention by conspiracists.
Another example is the theory of a whole bullet being found in the grass in Dealey Plaza within minutes of the assassination (which never happened, of course). And another is the theory that a whole bullet was recovered at JFK's autopsy. That never happened either. But many CTers insist it did (despite FBI agent James Sibert telling us in so many words that it didn't).
JAMES DiEUGENIO SAID:
I hate to tell you Lance, but you and DVP are the ones who weaved a fantasy.
You dreamed up a scenario in which PMO's were somehow segregated by the bank on site and bundled together so as to get around the fact that this particular PMO, which we call the Magic Money Order, has no evidence at all of going through the Federal Reserve System. Which it would have to do if it was genuine. (This parallels what DVP did with the handgun which he now tries to cover up with a 2011 [regulation] which does not apply to post office boxes.)
[DiEugenio is dead wrong about this. See this post.]
Two big problems:
1.) No documented circular says this about the segregation of PMO's.
2.) Two bank supervisors, one in Vegas and one in LA--with a combined experience of about 70 years--say it's not the case.
In other words, it was a fantasy, which you are still trying to maintain. If this was in a court of law, with all the witnesses accountable, do you know how long the magic money order would last? The judge would be cracking up in about 15 minutes.
Consider:
Oswald never left his job that morning to mail it--maybe you are going to say the time cards are forged?
The actual money order number is out of order, not by a little but a lot.
Oswald then walked out of his way to mail it after he allegedly bought it. Skipping even more work.
That magic money order was then shipped--according to the WC--all the way to Chicago, unloaded, sorted, distributed to the right station, then handed to a carrier, and then delivered, then sorted at Klein's, and then carried over to the bank, and then deposited--all in less than 24 hours.
At about this point in the hearing, the judge would be smiling and the jury would be looking at their watches. When do I get out of this madhouse?
Then the attorney for Oswald would show the out of order money order, exhibiting the fact there is no evidence it ever went through the system. He would then put all the other checks LHO passed to show they did, and then put up on the screen the circulars and then bring in the two bank supervisors.
IMO, right about here he would move for a mistrial. And if I am the prosecutor I would agree, because the other end of the transaction, showing Klein's sent the wrong rifle, one they did not have, would be just as deadly. Forget the facts, that 1.) no one admits to ever giving him the weapon and in fact, 2.) the post office regs, which [Harry] Holmes lied about, prohibited that to happen.
A nice by-product of this is Holmes would be up on perjury charges.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
More B.S. from Jimmy D. (as per usual).
The cold hard immutable fact is that the rabid CTers of the Internet have blown up the "money order problem" to absurd levels of perceived and wholly unproven conspiracy.
The Hidell money order actually isn't a problem at all. Not even close. There is MUCH more evidence to prove the M.O. is a genuine and valid document than there is to even suggest it's a fraud.
And Jimmy D. apparently won't even consider the notion that Oswald went to the post office BEFORE he ever went to work on March 12th (vs. buying the M.O. after 8:00 AM). It's quite possible the post office opened prior to 8 AM. And even if it didn't, there are numerous other ways in which Oswald could have purchased the M.O. and still have put in his full day's work on March 12. Perhaps he was just a little late for work that day, but he was punched in at 8:00 anyway. Is that not a possibility? (Not in a CTer world, no.)
And, incredibly, due to their silly theory that the Hidell M.O. serial number was "Out Of Order", Jimmy and The Almighty John Armstrong think that the Main Dallas Post Office had a never-ending supply of blank U.S. Postal Money Orders on hand in 1962 and 1963, so that they would never EVER have to re-stock its supply of PMOs. (Hilarious.)
It's time for another Money Order Summary:
- Lee Oswald's writing is on the money order.
- All of the proper post office stamps are on the M.O.
- A Klein's stamp is on the M.O.
- A File Locator Number is on the M.O. (indicating it made it to the FRB).
- The M.O. was found at the Federal Records Center in Alexandria (exactly where it should have been located after proper processing).
- The "bleed-thru" on the M.O. has been explained (see Cadigan Exhibit No. 11).
- Waldman No. 7 is consistent in EVERY way with all other documents relating to Oswald's rifle purchase.
With all of this in evidence, Jimmy D. thinks a trial judge would be rolling in his robes laughing within 15 minutes of the Hidell Postal Money Order being presented in court.
James DiEugenio, as usual, is nestled firmly and comfortably in his little fantasy world of wholesale fakery and forgery.
LANCE PAYETTE SAID:
Just in the interest of Non-Silliness, I would point out that: (1) In previous threads, we have noted that an FRB regulation stated that different types of cash items could be segregated if appropriate. As I recall, DVP suggested this possibility and I simply pointed out that it would have been permissible.
However, whether the money order at issue was segregated became irrelevant when we realized that it bore a File Locator Number, the ultimate evidence of it "going through the Federal Reserve System."
I suppose one could argue that my car being found in your garage tomorrow morning is no evidence that it was driven from my garage to yours during the night, but I believe most people would find this an unconvincing argument. However, if one is unalterably wedded to the theory that aliens from the Andromeda System teleported my car to your garage - well, then, of course, no evidence to the contrary can be allowed.
I do agree with DVP that the money order is an almost perfect illustration of the lengths that those who are wedded to a theory will go to preserve said theory.
Does anyone this side of Wonderland actually believe a money order was being found in Kansas City at virtually the same time that the one we know and love was being found in Washington? Why would the exhaustive Secret Service report dated two days later make no mention of this fact?
Why would the discovery in Kansas City have been learned about by the Secret Service agent in Chicago during a phone conversation with the agent in Dallas, and why would the agent in Chicago have then telephoned the agent in Kansas City (who was the postal inspectors' contact in Kansas City) to advise him of the find?
Why would the Justice Department (FBI) have sent a teletype the next day telling the offices in Chicago and Kansas City to discontinue their searches because the money order had been found in Washington? Oh, I forget - all of this was part of the "conspiracy," the mysterious subplot known in intelligence circles as "making the Kansas City money order disappear." Uh-huh. Yet Armstrong continues to beat this drum as though it had ominous implications, and the residents of Wonderland lap it up.
I think it's pretty obvious to the residents of Ontology Land that there is simply no point in even attempting to discuss these issues rationally. I'll have to give DVP credit - he's more dogged than I. The strategy of Wonderland, including Armstrong, seems to be to just keep shoveling the manure in hopes that the sheer volume will eventually bury all dissenting voices.
Has anyone taken the couple of hours it takes to review the 139-page PDF I mentioned? My vast JFK research career has been focused on precisely four items: the Wilmouth (non-)statement, the File Locator Number, the federal regulations and FRB materials pertaining to postal money orders, and now the Kansas City (non-)money order. In each case, I have held Armstrong's work up to the light of day and been forced to conclude, to my sincere disappointment, "He's shoveling manure."
SANDY LARSEN SAID:
Using Lance's line of reasoning, if you purchased a PMO and rubber stamped a File Locator Number on it, that would prove that it went through the Federal Reserve System.
The File Locator Number is an almost perfect illustration of the lengths that those who are wedded to a fallacious argument will go to preserve said fallacious argument.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
As I've said many times before, if you want to believe virtually everything was (or COULD HAVE BEEN) faked in the JFK case, then OF COURSE you're going to distrust ANY signs of genuineness and validity. It's what CTers do best---they look sideways at ALL the evidence.
So even if the File Locator Number is 100% real and legitimate, Sandy Larsen's argument will STILL trump all other arguments for Sandy and other CTers --- because EVERYTHING in life I suppose COULD be fake.
I wonder, therefore, what good ANY court trial is when it comes to arriving at the absolute truth? ~shrug~
JAMES DiEUGENIO SAID:
...there is no marking on the PMO that it went through the system.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Still want to totally ignore the File Locator Number, eh Jimmy? (Why of course you do.)
And your position regarding Oswald taking possession of the S&W revolver continues to be one of the funniest things on the Internet.
Regardless of WHERE Oswald picked up the gun (whether it was at the post office or at the Railway Express Agency), we KNOW he DID pick it up someplace, because he had that gun ON HIM on Nov. 22 in the theater. That is a FACT, regardless of your whining and foot pounding and Black Op Radio giggling.
But it's understandable why a rabid Internet conspiracy clown like Jim DiEugenio needs to pretend LHO didn't have the V510210 gun in his hands on 11/22. Because if Jimbo were to ever admit the truth, he would have no choice but to admit that Oswald shot and killed Patrolman J.D. Tippit. And we know Jimmy would never want to admit such a reality. Don't we, James?
JAMES DiEUGENIO SAID:
If you cannot produce it, then just SHUT UP!
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Is it okay for me to use that same rule on CTers, Jimmy? Such as on John Armstrong when he claimed in his book that there was some kind of Wilmouth statement that proved PMOs required commercial bank stamps?
And can I use it on all the CTers who claim there were gunmen firing from the Knoll at JFK on 11/22?
And on the CTers who insist there was a hole in the limo's windshield?
And on the CTers who insist there were a bunch of other bullets recovered from various places on 11/22?
And on and on to "CTer make-believe plots" infinity?
DiEugenio never met a pot (or a kettle) he didn't like.
TIM NICKERSON SAID:
I've been watching the thrashing that the Armstrongites have been taking over there at the ED Forum from Lance Payette. It's Hurricane Lance making multiple passes through the Harvey and Lee Trailer Park. The fools over there are battered and even more dazed than usual. I almost feel guilty in enjoying watching it.
SANDY LARSEN SAID:
Question for Lance Payette....
Lance,
You say that there is no need for a presenting bank to stamp postal money orders. That it doesn't make sense.
Then how do you explain the fact that, prior to the time that Federal Reserve Banks began processing PMOs, presenting banks were indeed required by the Post Office Department to stamp them? Why did the Post Office require bank stamps then, but not after FRBs began accepting PMOs?
Was there a need for the stamps at first, and this need disappeared? Did the bank stamps make sense at first, and quit making sense later?
What gives?
LANCE PAYETTE SAID:
Sandy, I believe your statement contains the answer to your own question. I'm not going to just keep rehashing this, because the "discussion" is going nowhere. As a final thought on this subject, I will offer the following. Please do not address me directly anymore, because I am not going to respond again.
- I Googled your 1898 newspaper article. I found five identical quotations, all from the period 1898-1905. At the risk of stating the obvious, that is a long time ago. The quotations are apparently from some postal "instructions," whatever that may mean. To assume that something like this from more than 100 years ago bears any relevance to today is an extreme stretch. The fact that you (and I) can find nothing more recent than this is telling.
- When the quoted materials were written, postal money orders could not be cashed at banks - only at the post office.
- When the quoted materials were written, the Federal Reserve system did not exist.
- When the quoted materials were written, postal money orders deposited at banks passed through a "clearing house system" en route back to the Postal Service. I have explained, and have cited a case from as late as 1967, that before a postal money order finds its way into the Federal Reserve system, a bank may well place a stamp - indeed, in the case I cited, the non-Federal Reserve bank stamped the money order with its "clearing house stamp" when it sent the money order to its "clearing house bank."
- The quoted materials themselves explain why the stamp was necessary: "so that no dispute may arise as to the number or identity of orders listed, or if at any time in the future it shall be necessary to request that such an order be redeemed by the bank." These concerns no longer exist. By regulation, "The presenting bank and the endorser of a money order presented for payment are deemed to guarantee to the postmaster general that all prior endorsements are genuine, whether an express guarantee to that effect is placed on the money order."
- As I have pointed out ad nauseam, the processing of money orders by the Federal Reserve is strictly a collection function.
- The Federal Reserve collection procedure in place today appears to me to bear no relation to the clearing house system in place in 1900.
- You ask, "Was there a need for the stamps at first, and this need disappeared?" Bingo - yes.
- You ask, "Did the bank stamps make sense at first, and quit making sense later?" Bingo - yes.
- You ask, "What gives?" See the above bullets.
No lawyer would attempt to score points with 100+ year-old postal instructions, adopted before postal money orders could be cashed at banks, adopted before the Federal Reserve system even existed, and adopted long before the Federal Reserve began performing a collection function pursuant to an agreement with the Postmaster General. You are grasping at straws - which you are certainly entitled to do, but it's a tactic that is seldom persuasive.
The fact that you think Jon "rules!" by virtue of his silly efforts to prove that I am not precisely who I say I am, when the facts could be established in a matter of minutes on Google by anyone who was sincerely interested, is rather sad and speaks volumes. I had hoped at one time that a sub-forum of The Education Forum, where posters must use their real names, would operate at a somewhat higher level than the typical Internet free-for-all. Alas, I was wrong.
SANDY LARSEN SAID:
Nearly every one of Lance's bullet points are regarding an 1898 letter that I posted elsewhere. My question here doesn't refer to that letter. So I don't know why he posted all that stuff.
My question is regarding the fact that the U.S. Post Office required bank stamps on PMOs cashed at banks until 1951, when Federal Reserve Banks began processing them. (Since then, PMO collection has been regulated by FRBs, and FRB regulations continued the practice of stamping PMOs.)
So while he answered two of my questions with these responses:
- "Was there a need for the stamps at first, and this need disappeared?" Bingo - yes.
- "Did the bank stamps make sense at first, and quit making sense later?" Bingo - yes.
he avoided explaining why. I believe because he cannot explain why.
LANCE PAYETTE SAID:
There is decisive evidence out there somewhere. Hundreds of millions of postal money orders were processed through the Federal Reserve System every year during the 1960's. Somewhere there are bank manuals, elderly postal or bank employees who were directly and knowledgably involved in the process, other processed money orders and similar resources that would settle once and for all whether punch card postal money orders were stamped by banks as they made their way through the Federal Reserve collection process and whether the "failure" of this particular postal money order to bear any stamp other than the Klein's deposit stamp would have been fatal.
This issue could be resolved by some diligent inquiry, but what fun would that be? It's far more fun — and far more likely to sell books — to speculate that a veritable team of FBI, Secret Service, Postal Service and Treasury Department officials were involved in an elaborate scheme of fabrication and deception.
Has anyone noticed that the "evidence" Sandy now regards as dispositive [is] not the evidence on which [John] Armstrong relied at all in formulating his claims? And that the "evidence" Armstrong did rely on has gone poof? And that massive new evidence to the contrary, such as the File Locator Number, has surfaced and been blithely ignored?
As one who truly has no dog in this fight, I'm just following the evidence where it, logic, common sense, and reasonable inferences and probabilities seem to lead. If extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, I would respectfully suggest that the "evidence" on which you rely does not come close to the level of being "extraordinary."
SANDY LARSEN SAID:
It is fully rational to "ignore" the FLN if the lack of a bank stamp indicates that the PMO wasn't processed. Because if it wasn't processed, then clearly the FLN was forged.
Based on the hard evidence, the conclusion is clearly that the PMO likely wasn't processed. I qualify my conclusion with the word "likely" because something unusual may have occurred. The most obvious being that somehow the Hidell PMO got passed up in the bank stamping step of the collection process.
There is also the SLIM possibility that you are right, that there was some sort of document that was separate from and superseded what was printed in FRB circulars, a document stating that PMOs did not require bank stamping. I find that possibility to be HIGHLY unlikely, because such information could have been printed in the circulars themselves. There is simply no reason to have informed banks of this exception in a separate document.
LANCE PAYETTE SAID:
Can you truly not see the logical flaws in this statement? -- ["It is fully rational to "ignore" the FLN if the lack of a bank stamp indicates that the PMO wasn't processed. Because if it wasn't processed, then clearly the FLN was forged."]
The money order bears the physical imprint of the File Locator Number. The money order was physically located after the assassination at the request of Postal and Secret Service officials at the Federal Records Center where processed money orders were stored. The Secret Service report describes in detail how the money order was easily located by Records Center employees once their machines were up and running, which means that the File Locator Number was likewise duly imprinted on the magnetic tape.
And yet you believe it is "fully rational" to ignore this reality because a Federal Reserve operating circular indicates "cash items" should be "endorsed" — even though at least one highly experienced lawyer (that would be me) has explained (pretty convincingly, I believe) that your reading of the operating circular is not consistent with the principles by which regulations are construed? This is like saying it is fully rational to ignore the Grand Canyon because you have a photo showing no canyon and are convinced it hasn't been photoshopped.
I have today sent the following inquiry to the Postal Museum Library at the Smithsonian Institution:
I am an Arizona lawyer. A "controversy" has arisen within the community of researchers studying the assassination of President Kennedy. It concerns the punch-card Postal Money Order that Lee Harvey Oswald ostensibly used to purchase his rifle in March of 1963. The Postal Money Order is stamped on the back with the rifle seller's deposit stamp for its account at the First National Bank of Chicago. The First National Bank of Chicago, a Federal Reserve member bank, then submitted the Postal Money Order to its regional Federal Reserve Bank in Chicago for processing and payment as the agent for the Postal Service. The Postal Money Order was subsequently imprinted with a File Locator Number by the Treasury Department and placed into storage at the Federal Records Center in Alexandria, Virginia. After the assassination, the Postal Money Order was retrieved from the Federal Records Center at the request of Postal officials and the Secret Service. A fringe group within the research community maintains that the Postal Money Order is demonstrably "fake" because it does not bear "bank stamps" from the First National Bank of Chicago and the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. I realize this is a highly technical and esoteric question, but I personally have exhausted all online resources in researching it. I am hopeful that the Library of the Postal Museum may have someone within its circle of contacts who is highly knowledgeable about the processing of Postal Money Orders in the era of 1963 and who perhaps can shed some light on this issue. Thanks very much indeed for any assistance you can provide.
I have already received a response from a real live human being, saying he will be "back in touch." If I were a serious researcher, as opposed to a hyperbolic seller of $90 books, the above is the approach I would have followed before declaring the money order a fake on the basis of an FBI interview in which the subject (Robert Wilmouth) did not actually say anything like I was claiming he had said. But perhaps I'm just fussy.
Let's see some of you other supposed researchers take some measures that look a little more like genuine research than cheerleading.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID THIS.
LANCE PAYETTE SAID:
You and I, DVP, have fallen down a rabbit hole where the normal rules of evidence and logic simply do not apply. I can see this, you can see this, others can see this, but the residents of the rabbit hole cannot see this because they are operating according to the rules of evidence and logic that apply within the rabbit hole. It's as simple as that. The rabbit hole has sturdy brick walls, and you and I are only beating our heads against them.
Why did no one before Armstrong discover all of the obvious fakery surrounding the money order? Precisely as you suggest, because there was nothing to discover. By the rules of rabbit hole evidence and logic, however, the non-discovery itself becomes further "proof" of just how widespread and diabolical the conspiracy was.
Although some have taken umbrage at my references to religious fundamentalists and other communities of true believers, those references were not intended to be insulting. (OK, references to "loons" and that sort of thing were intended to get under the skin of the Armstrong cheerleaders, but you and I have been the target of similar gibes and worse.) I actually do have pretty wide experience with the rabbit hole logic of such communities. It is simply a fact that such communities become so fixated upon a notion that the normal rules of evidence and logic fall by the wayside.
There is a fascinating 1956 book, When Prophecy Fails: A Social and Psychological Study of a Modern Group that Predicted the Destruction of the World, that explores how such communities remain intact even after the notion on which they have been fixated collapses like the house of cards it was.
Precisely as you suggest, they simply move the goal posts and declare any and all new evidence to be fake. The members of even the wildest of such communities are not necessarily "mentally disturbed" in any clinical sense; any number of psychological factors can contribute to making a community such as this attractive to a "normal" person. I am not equating the Armstrong cheerleaders to such a community, merely suggesting that they do operate by rules of evidence and logic that apply only within the walls of their community. For this reason, nothing — even a definitive response from the Postal Museum Library — will ever persuade them the money order is genuine and all the brouhaha has been much ado about nothing.
My participation here has not been because I find the silly money order issue to be fascinating or worthy of hours of my time, but because I do find observing how these communities operate to be fascinating.
LANCE PAYETTE ALSO SAID:
I am heartened by the fact that I have now had an exchange involving several emails with my contact at the Postal Museum. I sent him a photo of the money order itself to clarify what I was talking about.
This may go nowhere, but librarians can be some of the most helpful people on earth and it's clear that he is more than just some unhelpful website monitor. There is or was a guy who was clearly the acknowledged expert on the historical aspects of postal money orders and wrote several articles; I am hoping my email finds its way to him, but I don't know whether he is still alive.
I am not going to weigh back in on this topic (translation: I am not going to keep beating my head against the wall of the rabbit hole) unless and until I learn something definitive, but I will weigh back in even if the Postal Museum responds, "My God, this is astounding! The money order is a blatant fake! Can we get wholesale discount on 500 copies of Harvey and Lee?"
LANCE PAYETTE LATER SAID:
If I may attach my Harvey and Lee propeller to my conspiracy beanie for a moment, I would have thought a more plausible theory would have been: Harvey is induced to buy the rifle from Klein's for some ostensible purpose, perhaps in connection with Sen. Dodd's investigation of mail-order gun merchants. .... Voila, our patsy now has a rifle, with no need to fake or fabricate anything. Not an especially convincing assassination weapon, but probably the sort of thing Harvey actually would have purchased for himself.
As the time for the assassination draws nearer, Lee engages in a variety of activities, including the encounter with McKeown, to paint Harvey as an increasingly radical and gun-oriented pro-Castro fanatic.
On the morning of the assassination, Harvey is induced to bring his rifle to work for some ostensible purpose, or the conspirators simply remove it from Ruth Paine's garage after Harvey has left.
The rifle is planted, the Klein's paperwork and money order are easily located, and the conspirators toast each other with margaritas. Marina's testimony and the de Mohrenschildts' testimony is basically true and the backyard photos are authentic. All the "Mauser stuff" was just an understandable mistake in the confusion surrounding one of the most traumatic events in U.S. history.
Even in Harvey and Lee land, doesn't this make more sense?
While I have my Harvey and Lee beanie on, I will say I was disappointed that the book simply stopped with the assassination as though we had hit a brick wall. I think I would have left no stone unturned to figure out what became of Harvey and the Marguerite imposter.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Lance,
Stepping outside of Harvey & Lee Make Believe Land for another brief moment....
An even more reasonable, sensible, and believable scenario is the following one:
The one and only Lee H. Oswald (whose middle name just happened to be Harvey) purchases a cheap rifle for himself in March 1963 (so he can shoot a certain retired general in Dallas). He misses in his attempt to kill General Walker, but decides to hang on to the Carcano rifle (for some reason that I've never quite been able to figure out, other than his own extreme stinginess and unwillingness to get rid of something he only used once).
Oswald is then afforded the perfect opportunity to kill an even bigger political figure seven months later in November when the President is scheduled to come to town. And Lee just couldn't let such a golden target pass him by without trying to redeem himself for failing in an assassination attempt in April. Ergo, the "curtain rod" story is born, a long brown paper package is constructed, and an unusual Thursday night trip to Irving, Texas, is hastily planned.
The biggest snag for conspiracy theorists in the standard "Oswald Was Framed In Advance" theory is, in my view, the manner in which Lee Oswald obtained his job at the Book Depository.
In order to get Oswald "planted" into the building, CTers have no choice but to twist things into a silly unbelievable plot involving Ruth Paine, Linnie Mae Randle, Roy Truly, and/or Buell Wesley Frazier (or any combination of the above).
The normal, ordinary fashion in which Lee got the job just doesn't appeal to CTers, so an imaginary version of the event becomes mandatory for the conspiracists.
In short, every single thing the conspiracy theorists insist was the result of "conspiracy" in the JFK case are things that Lee Harvey Oswald could quite easily have accomplished without any conspiracy entering into the equation whatsoever. E.G., ordering the rifle and revolver via mail order, getting his job at the TSBD, transporting the rifle to the Depository on 11/22/63, firing three shots at JFK with his Mannlicher-Carcano, and getting to 10th Street in time to kill J.D. Tippit.
Not a single thing Oswald did on Nov. 21st or Nov. 22nd required the intervention of "conspiracy" or the assistance of a single other human being (other than the use of Wesley Frazier, Cecil McWatters, and William Whaley as Lee's chauffeurs). Lee Harvey Oswald—alone—could easily have committed the two murders that the Warren Commission (correctly) says he did commit in November of 1963.
DAVID VON PEIN LATER SAID:
A "Bleed-Thru" Addendum....
In addition to Cadigan Exhibit No. 11 — the significance of which was demonstrated on December 5, 2015, by Tim Brennan — I found another "clean" photo of the Hidell Postal Money Order on June 2, 2016, while reading the 12/9/63 FBI report on the assassination (Commission Document No. 1).
The picture of the money order in the FBI report can be seen HERE (and also below). The money order shows no signs at all of any "bleed thru" on either the front side or the back side, and is a picture that must have been taken prior to the document being chemically processed for fingerprints (just like Cadigan Exhibit No. 11).
Click to enlarge:
TOM HUME SAID:
Hi David,
This photo appears to have been taken with high-contrast film - I think they used to call it “line copy film”. It was good for taking pictures of documents, and one just sees the stark difference between black and white. All extraneous grey details are lost. Notice how the “138.....” number across the top is almost gone. If they'd tweaked the exposure a little more, it probably would've disappeared. In a previous life, I took and processed a lot of high-contrast photos.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
But the "138" in Cadigan No. 11 is just as dim. In fact, it looks a little dimmer in Cadigan 11.
TOM HUME SAID:
Hi David.
I was responding to your comment in post #422:
“The money order shows no sign at all of any “bleed thru” on either the front side or the back side, and is a picture that must have been taken prior to the document being chemically processed for fingerprints (just like Cadigan Exhibit No. 11).”
You may be right about Exhibit 11 having been taken prior to the document being chemically processed, I don’t have an opinion, but I’m just saying that if the photographer’s goal is to make a messy looking document look pristine, it’s not only possible, it’s done all the time. Without suggesting anything sinister, if there was bleed thru on the document (or even lightly pencilled secret messages), we would never know by looking at the two “clean” appearing high-contrast document photos you’ve written about.
A little over half way down the page on your long article, we see your side-by-side comparison of CE 788 and Cadigan Exhibit No 11. In addition to the FBI’s markings on CE 788, many other artifacts, real or illusionary, can be seen.
If it’s true that the devil’s in the details on some of the evidence the Government has provided, I want to see the details, and the rather stark difference between the “138...” number at the top of the two examples appears to show the document photographer’s preference for “clean” readability over “dirty” detail.
But thanks for pointing out your new find.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Well, Tom, I guess you could conceivably be correct when you said this -- "If there was bleed thru on the document...we would never know by looking at the two “clean” appearing high-contrast document photos you’ve written about" -- but when looking at a side-by-side comparison (below) between the FBI photo and Commission Exhibit 788, I have a hard time believing that NONE of the obvious bleed-thru that can be seen in CE788 (particularly the bleeding through of the "March 12" post office stamp in the corner) would be visible in the FBI's photograph of that same document if the bleed-thru had actually been present on the money order at the time the FBI picture was taken. But as we can see, not a trace of any "bleed thru" can be seen on the back side of the Postal Money Order in the FBI photo:
BTW, Tom, as I pointed out earlier, the picture in Cadigan #11 was definitely taken before the money order was treated for fingerprint analysis:
MR. EISENBERG -- "Are the photographs which you produced photographs of the items before they were treated for fingerprints or after?"
MR. CADIGAN -- "Yes; before they were treated for fingerprints. In other words, it is regular customary practice to photograph an exhibit before it is treated for latents for exactly this reason, that in the course of the treatment there may be some loss of detail, either total or partial."
JAMES DiEUGENIO SAID:
We went through this for hours on end.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
We sure did. And you just simply IGNORED the File Locator Number.
Plus, the "bleed thru" thing has also been explained in a non-sinister fashion. I suppose you have totally ignored that fact too. Because, you see, that's who Jim DiEugenio is. He's a conspiracy zealot and he doesn't care if things have been explained in reasonable non-conspiratorial ways or not.
JAMES DiEUGENIO SAID:
I never said anything about bleed through.
Secondly, there is nothing about the file locator number superseding the validation of the money order, from either the documents or the bank supervisors.
In fact, the documents found by Sandy [Larsen] and David [Josephs] indicate the opposite is the case.
If you have evidence to the contrary, what is it?
Meanwhile you will ignore the latest discovery, right? That is of two dates for the original purchase.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Huh? Point me to the info about this "latest discovery" regarding "two dates". I don't recall hearing that argument before.
EDIT:
I now realize that DiEugenio is probably referring to the June 1962 (Feldsott) vs. February 1963 (Waldman) date discrepancy for when Klein's gained possession of Rifle C2766. That's hardly anything new, however. I have no definitive answer for the date discrepancy, but I laid it all on the table and talked about it at my own website several years ago, when I said this:
[Quote On:]
"ORDERING THE RIFLE:
Obviously Lee Harvey Oswald ordered that bolt-action Carcano rifle from Klein's Sporting Goods on March 12, 1963. All of the documents are in Oswald's very own handwriting. How anyone can believe he did not order that weapon HIMSELF is beyond my imagination. [See Commission Exhibits 773, 788, and 789.]
And the same goes for the Smith & Wesson revolver that Oswald also ordered in early 1963. That order form, too, was filled out in Oswald's handwriting, without doubt [CE790].
And, btw, as a side note here -- I don't believe there is any proof that Oswald MAILED that order form for the revolver in January. He filled out the order form itself with a late January date, but that doesn't mean he put it in the mail in January.
Given the fact that both the rifle and the revolver were shipped from the two mail-order firms on the same day--March 20--it seems reasonable to me to think that Oswald might very well have mailed both order forms--for the rifle and the revolver--at the same time in March of '63.
In any event, all of the paperwork in evidence proves that Lee Harvey Oswald (aka: A.J. Hidell) ordered and paid for the two murder weapons -- both the rifle and the revolver.
And one of the best documents that proves Oswald ordered Carcano Rifle C2766 is Waldman Exhibit No. 7.
The C2766 serial number, btw, is a serial number that nobody in the world has ever seen duplicated on any other Mannlicher-Carcano rifle, even though Jim DiEugenio thinks that Thomas H. Purvis and Dr. John K. Lattimer have owned Carcanos with that exact same serial number on them. But Jim is wrong about that.
Lattimer told researcher John A. Canal in April 2004 that the "C2766" number that appears in Lattimer's 1980 book "Kennedy And Lincoln" was an error. And the error couldn't be corrected before the book went to press.
And Tom Purvis hasn't produced any other "C2766" Carcano either. [...]
So, Jim, were Klein's Sporting Goods and all of the various handwriting experts for both the Warren Commission and the HSCA part of an elaborate post-assassination cover-up too?
Plus -- There's William Waldman's Warren Commission testimony, wherein he confirmed that on the evening of 11/22/63, Klein's had been contacted by the FBI about Klein's searching through its records for information about the C2766 rifle. The FBI had obtained information from the rifle wholesaler (Crescent Firearms of New York City) that C2766 had been included in a bulk shipment of Carcano rifles that was originally received by Klein's Sporting Goods in February 1963:
"We were able to determine from our purchase records the date in which the rifle had been received, and they also had a record of when it had been shipped, so we knew the approximate date of receipt by us, and...we examined our microfilm records which show orders from mail order customers and related papers, and from this determined to whom the gun had been shipped by us." -- William J. Waldman; Vice President of Klein's Sporting Goods, Inc. [at 7 H 364-365]
There is a discrepancy as to the exact date when Klein's received this shipment of guns from Crescent. Louis Feldsott, the President of Crescent Firearms, signed an affidavit [at 11 H 205] saying that the rifles were shipped on June 18, 1962, which conflicts with the paperwork that can be seen in Waldman Exhibit No. 5. But keep in mind that Waldman Exhibit 5 is a document that was generated by CRESCENT FIREARMS, not Klein's.
So, the paper trail is complete -- from Crescent Firearms, to Klein's, to Hidell/Oswald. And it's not reasonable to believe that all of this detailed paperwork regarding the disposition and sale of Rifle C2766 has (or could have been) faked or manufactured, particularly in such a lightning-quick fashion within hours of the assassination, and also involving more than one company (Crescent and Klein's).
Plus: The whole idea of a SERIAL NUMBER is to provide a SINGULARLY UNIQUE number for a SINGLE item--such as a rifle, or an electronic appliance, or an automobile, or whatever the product might be.
And to believe, as some theorists actually do (such as Thomas H. Purvis) that there are up to "30 to 50" (Purvis' quote) Mannlicher-Carcano Model 91/38 rifles with the EXACT same serial number on them of C2766 is a belief that defies all logic--and it defies the literal definition and PURPOSE of a "serial number" in the first place. Such a belief is nuts. And particularly with respect to FIREARMS, which are items that are frequently used in crimes, which means that law enforcement agencies often need to trace specific serial numbers to specific alleged criminals.
And, as I said, as of this date, not a single person on the planet has produced for public inspection a single additional Mannlicher-Carcano 91/38 rifle with the serial number C2766 affixed to it. And I doubt anybody ever will--because, IMO, no other such rifle exists or was ever manufactured to begin with.
And there's something else that nobody has ever been able to do, and that is to produce two Mannlicher-Carcano rifles with the same serial number--period. Not necessarily C2766. But ANY number.
Can anyone produce two MC rifles that have the same number on them--let's say serial number G1519? Any number would do, as long as we could see two MC rifles bearing the exact same number. That at least would prove that the factories making the Carcanos did, indeed, produce multiple rifles with the same number. But that has never been proven either, as far as I know.
But even if someone does eventually come forward and show the world two MC rifles with the very same serial number, it really wouldn't mean very much at all.
Why?
Because there's only ONE Mannlicher-Carcano rifle in the whole world, regardless of serial number, that killed John F. Kennedy, and that weapon was the one found inside the Book Depository Building on 11/22/63.
So even if someone produces 25 more Carcanos with the serial number C2766 on them, it wouldn't suddenly make the C2766 rifle found in the Depository CEASE being the Kennedy murder weapon. Nothing can ever do that. Not even a thousand more "C2766" rifles."
-- David Von Pein; June 2010 and March 2012
~~~~~~~~~
And here's what Vince Bugliosi had to say about the Feldsott/Waldman date conflict:
"Consistent with the unavoidable errors and discrepancies that so frequently accompany monetary transactions involved in the sale of products, Louis Feldsott, president of Crescent Firearms in New York City, told the Warren Commission he sold Oswald’s Carcano, serial number C2766, to Klein’s in Chicago on June 18, 1962 (11 H 205, WC affidavit of Louis Feldsott), yet William Waldman, vice president of Klein’s, said the subject Carcano was part of a shipment of one hundred rifles sent to them by Crescent on February 15, 1963 (over eight months after it was sold to Klein’s?), and received by Klein’s on February 21, 1963 (7 H 363; Waldman Exhibit No. 2, 21 H 693).
Since we don’t have the Crescent Firearms document Feldsott based his affidavit on, we can rely on the aforementioned document we do have from Crescent showing the Carcano being part of a February 15, 1963, shipment by Crescent that was received by Klein’s on February 21, 1963 (Waldman Exhibit No. 2,
21 H 693; see also Waldman Exhibit No. 3, 21 H 698).
So either Feldsott’s affidavit was incorrect, or Crescent actually shipped the hundred rifles to Klein’s more than eight months after it sold the rifles to Klein’s." -- Vincent Bugliosi; Page 392 of Endnotes in "Reclaiming History"
GIL JESUS SAID (ON JULY 30, 2010):
Thanks to the affidavit of Louis Feldsott, we have evidence that Klein's bought two C 2766 rifles from Crescent Firearms: one in June 1962 and the other in February 1963.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID (ON JULY 30, 2010):
If that was the case (which it obviously isn't), then I wonder why Louis Feldsott didn't ALSO report to the Warren Commission about having sold Klein's a SECOND rifle with the serial number C2766?
Did Feldsott stop looking?
Since all reasonable people know, of course, that there is only ONE MANNLICHER-CARCANO RIFLE that was ever stamped with the unique serial number of C2766, then we must conclude that Feldsott was incorrect about the date of the shipment of the C2766 rifle to Klein's. It wasn't June of 1962; it was February of 1963 (per the verified records we can currently find in Warren Commission Volume 21).
For all their efforts and silliness, the conspiracy theorists who are desperate to take the JFK murder weapon out of Lee Harvey Oswald's hands still have failed to come up with any proof that ANY TWO Carcano rifles were ever stamped with the exact same serial number--C2766 or any other number.
You'd think after searching for all these years for a duplicate "C2766" MC, the CTers might be able to show the world one of these duplicate guns (especially since mega-kook Thomas H. Purvis once claimed that there might be somewhere between 30 and 50 MC rifles with the same C2766 number on them)!
And yet, to date, not a single C2766 has surfaced--except Commission Exhibit No. 139.
But even if 100 additional Carcano rifles were discovered tomorrow with the same C2766 serial number on them -- who cares? So what?
Would the discovery of several more "C2766" MC rifles suddenly make Oswald's C2766 rifle CEASE BEING THE WEAPON THAT KILLED PRESIDENT KENNEDY? Of course it wouldn't; and that's because Oswald's C2766 gun (CE139) has unique barrel rifling marks that set it apart from all other rifles--including any other Carcano rifles that the kooks think are also stamped with the serial number C2766.
So, in reality, the argument that CTers continue to dredge up regarding potential duplicate C2766 serial numbers is a worthless argument in the first place. Because the "C2766" gun that was found on the sixth floor of the TSBD (with OSWALD'S prints on it) is the one and only gun that killed JFK.
JAMES DiEUGENIO SAID:
[John] Armstrong...deduced that there were at least three million of the rifles built. Many of them were then sold after the war.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
And have you, Jimmy, yet seen ANY TWO of those weapons that have the exact same serial number on them?
Has anyone in the whole world come up with two separate Carcano 91/38 rifles that have the exact same serial number stamped on them?
The answer to that last question is, as far as I am aware, a resounding NO, they have not.
But, Jimmy, if it makes you happy, keep on pretending that Tom Purvis was right when he made this outlandish statement in 2008:
"Considering all known variables (excluding re-barrelling) there were between 30 to 50 weapons produced which could have had the exact "C2766" serial number." -- Thomas Purvis (aka "Brokedad"); September 11, 2008
THOMAS H. PURVIS SAID (ON SEPTEMBER 10, 2008):
1938 and beyond:
1. The Model 38 was first put out in the 7.35mm caliber.
2. Later, the caliber was changed to the 6.5mm caliber and became known as the Model 91/38.*
* With this change, multiple "ORIGINAL" weapons were created which would have had the serial# C2766, as the weapon was produced at multiple arms manufacturing plants.
BUD SAID (ON SEPTEMBER 14, 2008):
You are talking Powerball odds that Crescent firearms or Klein's would have two Carcano rifles with the same serial number. A person spending his whole life might find two Carcanos with the same serial number. Note that when Klein's inventoried the boxes of Carcanos [Click Here], they didn't even bother with the letter prefix in front of the serial number, knowing full well how unlikely it would be to get two rifles with just the same numbers.
TOM PURVIS SAID:
The weapon has been specifically identified with four different plant manufacturing stamps on it. Therefore, at minimum, there could be as many as 4 of the weapons which were originally produced with the C2766 serial number.
BUD SAID:
Even if true, which isn't shown, the chance of any other C2766 ending up in America is slim. The chance of two such rifles ending up in Crescent or Klein's inventories is mindbogglingly remote. Hard to imagine even with effort, with an intent to frame, that someone could find the necessary rifle with the matching serial number to do such a thing.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID (ON SEPTEMBER 15, 2008):
And this is a very strange argument for Mr. Purvis to be making in the first place. Purvis thinks that CE139 is the real murder weapon of JFK. He doesn't think there was anything underhanded about the way Oswald obtained Rifle C2766 from Klein's.
At least I don't think he thinks there is anything covert or underhanded about it. But, then again, with so many theories flying around loose like confetti in a tornado...who knows?
Perhaps I'm wrong and Purvis thinks that somebody miraculously got ahold of a second MC 91/38 rifle with #C2766 on it and then did a switcheroo of some kind. And maybe somebody also faked Waldman Exhibit No. 7, to boot.
Or, maybe Purvis is just spitting out impossibly complicated C2766 rifle scenarios just for the heck of it, and/or just for the sake of pumping his own chest with respect to his vast knowledge about these Italian-made firearms....even though the entire topic is a completely moot one.
Ya think?
(I do.)
JAMES DiEUGENIO SAID:
No one, repeat, no one censors the information at his site like Davey does.
In fact, in that regard he even surpasses [John] McAdams, which I thought would be impossible.
We already have evidence that there were duplicates because Sucher bought thousands of them! And he was an eyewitness to the numbering system.
Purvis proved by comparing two rifles that the numbering system did repeat itself.
At one point Lattimer said he had a rifle with the same serial number as Oswald's.
But then one of the zealots got to him and he changed his story. (Which is what usually happens on their side, as with Jean Davison saying today Oswald did not know Russian when he got to USSR. This is changed from her book.)
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Jimmy said:
"Purvis proved by comparing two rifles that the numbering system did repeat itself."
Purvis didn't "prove" anything of the kind.
Here's what I said to DiEugenio in 2008:
"Two more examples of Mr. DiEugenio playing fast and loose with the facts of the case with respect to the "rifle/serial number" issue are illustrated below:
1.) DiEugenio states in his "Von Pein: Still Cheerleading" article:
"Tom Purvis has proved there was at least one of those [36-inch Model 38 Carcanos] stamped with that serial number [C2766]." -- James D.
Of course, Purvis "proved" no such thing at all. Not even close to it, in fact. Jim just THINKS that Purvis has "proved" the existence of such a second "C2766" Carcano.
Mr. Purvis apparently owns (or owned) a Carcano Model 91/38 rifle with a serial number that began with "C5XXX" (I can't recall the exact number, but the first number after the "C" was a "5", which is the important part).
And therefore, per Purvis' way of assessing the situation, this has to mean (undeniably) that a rifle with "C2766" on it must have also been produced at that exact Carcano factory (wherever it was, I can't recall, but it doesn't matter) at some point prior to his "C5XXX" being manufactured, given the presumed progressive numbering system for such things.
But Purvis hasn't proven that these various Carcano plants that were manufacturing the MC rifles many years ago didn't have some kind of inventory system in place that would ensure that no two rifles of the same make and model would end up with the same identical serial number.
I happen to believe that some kind of inventory system for serial numbers WAS probably being used at those various Carcano factories (even years ago, before the computer age and more efficient inventory systems being in place, etc.).
Because the whole point of stamping an item with a SERIAL NUMBER is to make that item UNIQUE when compared to all others. Right? Of course it's right. And it stands to reason that the Carcano plants of the world were adhering to that basic type of "unique" policy with respect to serial numbers on their products, even back in the early 1900s.
Yes, I suppose it's possible that a second rifle with the number C2766 on it might have slipped through the cracks at one of the plants who made those weapons years ago. I can't deny that possibility.
But to believe, as Mr. Purvis seems to believe, that as many as "30 to 50" MC 91/38 rifles could have been stamped with that same C2766 number is, IMO, just simply ludicrous.
Plus: To repeat, where is the proof that ANY other MC 91/38 rifle (besides CE139) was ever stamped with the number "C2766"? To date, no such proof exists (even via the late Dr. John K. Lattimer; see the following comments on that).
2.) Jim DiEugenio also said this:
"As I reported, Dr. [John] Lattimer had one [Carcano rifle] of the 40 inch variety with the C 2766 serial number." -- James D.
Jim evidently hasn't seen the following comments made by Dr. Lattimer himself (in 2004) regarding the confusing matter that appears in Lattimer's 1980 book "Kennedy And Lincoln", in which he stated that he did, indeed, own a Carcano 91/38 rifle with the number C2766 stamped on it.
But, when we do a little leg work regarding this Lattimer rifle (as John Canal did, by writing to Lattimer himself), the mystery of Dr. Lattimer's duplicate "C2766" rifle is cleared up in just a few words....these words:
"I can't recall who asked me to check with Dr. Lattimer re. the notation in his book that the serial # of the Mannlicher-Carcano he used for his tests was C-2766 (the same [serial number] as the Mannlicher-Carcano found in the TSBD), but I asked him about it and today I received a letter from him with the answer. It's simple. It was [an] error: "...the book was printed before we noticed the error and it was too late to correct it"." -- John Canal; April 30, 2004
To re-emphasize Dr. Lattimer's quote within John Canal's post above:
"The book was printed before we noticed the error and it was too late to correct it." -- Dr. John K. Lattimer; April 2004
Sorry, Jim. There's another C2766 theory down the drain.
So, we're still left at the end of this day (like all other days since November 22, 1963) with no proof whatsoever that any other Mannlicher-Carcano Model 91/38 rifle (other than CE139) was ever stamped with the specific serial number C2766." -- David Von Pein; October 2008
JAMES DiEUGENIO SAID:
But let me tell you where this will all lead, from my past experience with Davey.
He will now say it does not matter anyway, just like he once said back and to the left doesn't matter.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Yes, that's correct, I will say exactly that very thing---and have said that exact thing in the past. In fact, I said it earlier in this very discussion--twice! (Jimmy's memory is now apparently nonexistent entirely.)
And you KNOW why this whole topic of "Duplicate C2766 Serial Numbers" is completely irrelevant, Jimbo. You know why. You just want to ignore the reason why. So I'll say it yet again (so you can ignore it yet again)....
"Even if 100 additional Carcano rifles were discovered tomorrow with the same C2766 serial number on them -- who cares? So what? Would the discovery of several more "C2766" MC rifles suddenly make Oswald's C2766 rifle CEASE BEING THE WEAPON THAT KILLED PRESIDENT KENNEDY? Of course it wouldn't; and that's because Oswald's C2766 gun (CE139) has unique barrel rifling marks that set it apart from all other rifles--including any other Carcano rifles that the CTers think are also stamped with the serial number C2766. So, in reality, the argument that conspiracists continue to dredge up regarding potential duplicate C2766 serial numbers is a worthless argument in the first place. Because the "C2766" gun that was found on the sixth floor of the TSBD (with OSWALD'S prints on it) is the one and only gun that killed JFK." -- DVP; July 30, 2010
JAMES DiEUGENIO SAID THIS.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
DiEugenio can't possibly be serious in his last post linked above. Everything he wrote in that post is absurd and laughable---covering all three topics.
Per Jimbo's strained logic, since Thomas H. Purvis once allegedly had a rifle with a "C5XXX" serial number, that somehow "PROVES" (in Jimmy's mind) that a second rifle with "C2766" on it had to have existed.
I'd love to hear that idiotic argument uttered in a court of law. The laughter would never cease.
DAVID VON PEIN LATER SAID:
From Vincent Bugliosi's book:
"William Suchur [sic], the owner of International Firearms Company of Montreal, informed the FBI on March 12, 1964, per a letter from J. Edgar Hoover to the Warren Commission of April 22, 1964, that “in the 1930’s Mussolini ordered all arms factories to manufacture the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle. Since many concerns were manufacturing the same weapon, the same serial number appears on weapons manufactured by more than one concern. Some bear a letter prefix and some do not” (CE 2562, 25 H 808). However, no other Mannlicher-Carcano with a serial number of C2766 has ever surfaced, although one with a serial number of 2766 without any prefix did. .... However, even if another Mannlicher-Carcano did surface with the same serial number as Oswald’s, C2766, it would be irrelevant since we know one with that serial number was sold and sent to Oswald, was found in the sniper’s nest*, and was proved to be the murder weapon." -- Vincent Bugliosi; Page 340 of Endnotes in "Reclaiming History"
* Slight error on Bugliosi's part here. Vince, of course, knew full well that the rifle was not found "in the sniper's nest" itself. He obviously meant to say "on the sixth floor of the Book Depository Building" instead of "in the sniper's nest".
But it seems to me that a reasonable interpretation of what William Sucher told the FBI in March 1964 would be that only the four numerals that appear after the letter prefix in a serial number are repeated when stamping the serial numbers on Mannlicher-Carcano rifles. Hence, he said "some bear a letter prefix and some do not".
Therefore, when the four digits in a given serial number are identical to the numbers stamped on a previously manufactured gun, a letter prefix is added to the number to set it apart from all other Carcano serial numbers. I certainly think that's one way to interpret Sucher's remarks at any rate. Although apparently Vince Bugliosi did not interpret Sucher's statement in such a manner. Otherwise, I think he would have mentioned such an interpretation in his book, which he did not do.
RELATED FLASHBACK....
GIL JESUS SAID (ON SEPTEMBER 9, 2008):
[Quoting from Commission Exhibit No. 2562, p.15:] "Since many concerns were manufacturing the same weapon, THE SAME SERIAL NUMBER APPEARS ON WEAPONS MANUFACTURED BY MORE THAN ONE CONCERN. Some bear a letter prefix and some do not." .... Now, where did he say that no two weapons bore the same letter prefix?
DAVID VON PEIN SAID (ON SEPTEMBER 9, 2008):
Yes, you're correct here (in a way), Gil. I'll admit that.
I.E.,
The above passage which you quoted from CE2562 can, indeed, be interpreted this way:
The exact same 5-character serial number can appear on multiple Mannlicher-Carcano Model 91/38 rifles that were manufactured at different plants, which would include the same prefix letter as well as the same four numbers that follow the prefix letter.
But I also think the above quote from CE2562 can be interpreted another way, which is probably the correct way of interpreting it, especially when factoring in these two things as a prerequisite:
1.) J. Edgar Hoover's comments to J. Lee Rankin on Page 1 of that 20-page document that makes up Warren Commission Exhibit No. 2562, wherein Hoover is telling Rankin about two specific rifles of interest to the Commission, rifles which bear similar serial numbers, but not serial numbers that are exactly the same, because one of them doesn't bear the "C" letter prefix.
And:
2.) The fact that nobody, to date, has produced a single example of another Model #91/38 Mannlicher-Carcano rifle that bears the exact same 5-character serial number as the one that was shipped by Klein's to Hidell/Oswald in March 1963. And, as far as I am aware, nobody has ever come up with ANY two separate MC 91/38 rifles that bear the exact same 5-character serial number, regardless of whether the number is "C2766" or some other number.
Given the above two facts, I believe that the above quote that you cited from CE2562 could reasonably be interpreted in the following manner:
The exact same 4-digit serial NUMBER (i.e., the numerals 0 through 9) can appear on multiple Mannlicher-Carcano Model 91/38 rifles that were manufactured at different plants, but if the very same 4-digit number does appear on any two rifles, then one of these rifles will include a letter prefix in front of the 4-digit number, while the other rifle will not have this prefix.
In my opinion, the above explanation is a reasonable one, given the comments by J. Edgar Hoover on Page #1 of CE2562. And it's also a very reasonable explanation when factoring in the following comments regarding this topic of serial numbers that were made by the FBI's Robert A. Frazier to the Warren Commission in 1964:
MR. EISENBERG -- "Based on your experience with firearms, is the placement of a specific serial number on a weapon generally confined to one weapon of a given type?"
MR. FRAZIER -- "Yes, it is. Particularly--may I refer to foreign weapons particularly? The serial number consists of a series of numbers which normally will be repeated. However, a prefix is placed before the number, which actually must be part of the serial number, consisting of a letter."
MR. EISENBERG -- "Have you been able to confirm that the serial number on this weapon is the only such number on such a weapon?"
MR. FRAZIER -- "Yes, it is."
JAMES DiEUGENIO SAID:
Davey: Please show us where in VB's 2646-page opus [sic; Bugliosi's book is actually 2,824 pages long, including all endnotes and source notes] he tells the reader that the rifle the Dallas Police offered into evidence is not the same rifle that Oswald allegedly ordered?
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Okay. Gladly. Here you go....
[Quote On:]
"The Warren Commission overlooked putting the American Rifleman advertisement in its volumes. But conspiracy theorist Sylvia Meagher points out that the advertisement was for a $12.88 Carcano ($19.95 with scope) that was 36 inches long, weighed 5 1⁄2 pounds, and had a catalog number of C20-T750, though we know the $19.95 Carcano that was sent to Oswald was 40 1⁄5 inches long and weighed 8 pounds, which was closer to the 40-inch Carcano weighing 7 pounds advertised in the November 1963 ad in a different magazine, Field and Stream. But Meagher fails to state the significance of this discrepancy.*
In other words, so what? We know Oswald was shipped his Carcano, serial number C2766 (whether or not it was the same weapon he had ordered, and whether or not he was even aware he received a Carcano a little over 4 inches longer and 3 1⁄2 pounds [sic] heavier than he had ordered), we know it was found in the sniper’s nest [sic], and we know it was the murder weapon."
-- Vincent Bugliosi; Pages 392-393 of Endnotes in "Reclaiming History"
* Sources used by Bugliosi for the above book excerpt:
Sylvia Meagher, Accessories after the Fact, p.48 footnote; fact that Oswald ordered his Carcano from a February 1963 Klein’s advertisement in the American Rifleman magazine: Waldman Exhibit No. 8, 21 H 704; CE 773, 17 H 635;
WR, p.119; 7 H 366, WCT William J. Waldman; advertisement reprinted in “In the Works: Tighter Laws on Gun Sales,” p.4; see also the August 27, 1965, edition of Life magazine [pages 62-65]; Field and Stream ad where yet a different catalog number, C20-750, is used for the Carcano: Holmes Exhibit No. 2, 20 H 174, viii; 7 H 294, WCT Harry D. Holmes; length and weight of Oswald’s Carcano: 3 H 395, WCT Robert A. Frazier.
~~~~~~~~~~
The LIFE Magazine article linked below, which is referred to by Vince Bugliosi as a source note in the book excerpt I quoted above, could be of some interest to people who are fascinated with the subject of Oswald's C2766 Carcano rifle. I'm sure some conspiracists can find something in this article to complain about:
MICAH MILETO SAID:
Is there a difference between a "bank endorsement" to a bank versus from a bank?
SANDY LARSEN SAID:
When a bank presents a check to the counter of another bank for deposit, it must endorse the check. By endorsing the check, the presenting bank guarantees that the receiving bank will indeed be credited for the amount printed on the check. Even if the check bounces.
LANCE PAYETTE SAID:
Micah, you are being lured deeper and deeper down a rabbit hole by people who (1) have reasons for wishing to keep the Klein's PMO a mystery and (2) don't know what they are talking about. I am no longer active on this silly forum, but I have been a lawyer for 35+ years, do know how to read federal statutes and regulations, and do at least have some idea what I am talking about.
1. Start with the File Locator Number (FLN), which no CT loon had even addressed before I identified what it was in a mere two hours of research on Google. (Let me repeat that: In the DECADES that the Klein's PMO had been debated, no one had even discussed what those rather prominent numbers across the top of the PMO might be!) The FLN is the number assigned when a PMO makes its way completely through the payment/collection cycle and is put into storage at the Federal Records Center, where it is retained for a period in case the Postal Service raises questions about it and wishes to examine it (or needs it for evidence in a court case). The FLN allows the PMO to be easily located, as this one was after the assassination. The fact that the Klein's PMO bears a FLN is a huge problem for the CT loons because IT IS PRIMA FACIE EVIDENCE THE KLEIN'S PMO MADE IT ENTIRELY THROUGH THE PAYMENT/COLLECTION CYCLE.
2. John Armstrong started all the silliness about the Klein's PMO not having the required bank endorsements. In Harvey and Lee, he cited to a bank official at the First National Bank of Chicago (named Wilmouth, as I recall) who supposedly said this. I exposed that the citations were FICTITIOUS. The bank official never said anything about bank endorsements. Armstrong's fiction became CT "gospel" and has been repeated throughout the conspiracy literature, apparently without any of these "experts" bothering to check Armstrong's footnotes as I did. When I pointed out that Armstrong's citations were fictitious, which you can easily confirm for yourself, the non-response was deafening.
3. When you put 1 and 2 together, I don't believe there is much need for further discussion about the authenticity of the Klein's PMO. But I will persevere for your benefit ...
4. Under the federal regulations of the time, a PMO could have ONLY ONE ENDORSEMENT. That was by the payee, in this case Klein's. The "Pay to the order of" stamp on the back of the PMO is Klein's endorsement. People who insist the Klein's PMO should have "bank endorsements" merely reveal their ignorance. The federal regulations also stated that "bank stamps" were not deemed endorsements, which logically raises the question "What is a bank stamp, and should the Klein's PMO have had one or more bank stamps?"
5. The Federal Reserve is a BANKING SYSTEM with a central bank, 12 regional banks, and many member banks. Most banks are members of the Federal Reserve system, but there can be non-member banks. The First National Bank of Chicago was a member bank.
6. Insofar as PMOs are concerned, the Federal Reserve acts as the COLLECTION AGENT for the Postal Service under an agreement with the Postmaster General. In banking terminology, the Postal Service is deemed to be the "paying bank" for PMOs, while the Federal Reserve is merely a collection agent that does the processing and transmittal to the Federal Records Center. (The bank that accepts a PMO for deposit - in this case the First National Bank of Chicago - is the "depository bank." If Klein's had deposited a check written on an account at the Bank of America, BOA would be the "paying bank.")
7. Under the Federal Reserve regulations, PMOs are treated as "cash items." This is relevant to how they are packaged and transmitted from member banks to the Federal Reserve regional and central banks. They are treated like government checks and food stamps, with a minimum of processing since there is seldom serious concern about their authenticity.
8. I believe that when a PMO was deposited by a payee (such as Klein's) at a bank that was a member of the Federal Reserve system (such as First National Bank of Chicago), the depository bank simply packaged the PMO as a cash item and transmitted it to its Federal Reserve regional bank (in this case the one in Chicago). There was no need for a Federal Reserve member bank to "endorse" (i.e., stamp) the PMO - the member bank was simply transmitting the PMO to its regional Federal Reserve bank. Nor was there any need for the regional Federal Reserve bank to "endorse" (i.e., stamp) the PMO when it transmitted the PMO to the central Federal Reserve bank. All banks in the chain were part of the Federal Reserve system, which was simply acting as a collection agent for the Postal Service.
9. The Postal Service, of course, had received its money when the initial buyer of the PMO purchased it. The point of the collection process was merely for the depository bank that had accepted and paid the money order to be reimbursed from the Postal Service's account with the Treasury Department. Getting the PMO into the Federal Reserve system is what ensured that this would be done. The Federal Reserve regulations made clear that the Federal Reserve would not become involved in disputes as to whether a PMO had been stolen or had other issues. The Federal Reserve was simply acting as a collection agent. If an issue later arose, it was up to the Postal Service to retrieve the PMO from the Federal Records Center and deal with the depository bank (if necessary) and the person who had stolen or forged the PMO.
10. So where do bank stamps fit into this? I found a federal court case that I believe explains this. PMOs were sometimes deposited or cashed at banks that were NOT members of the Federal Reserve system. In order for the collection process to work, the PMO had to get into the Federal Reserve system. This was done by the non-member bank sending the PMO to a designated "clearinghouse" bank, which then got the PMO into the Federal Reserve system. It is the non-member bank and possibly the clearinghouse bank that I believe would have been required to stamp a PMO in order to establish the chain of payment from the initial deposit with the non-member bank.
All the talk of "missing bank endorsements" on the Klein's PMO is just nonsense by people who don't know what they are talking about and are determined to perpetuate a mystery that was put to rest by items 1 and 2 above. Sandy's post immediately above is just nonsense from a layman who deludes himself that he can interpret federal regulations. If nothing else, my participation in this discussion was an eye-opening, eye-popping lesson for me about how the CT loons operate. You literally cannot have a rational discussion with these folks. There may be some aspects of the Kennedy assassination that are genuinely puzzling and worth pursuing, but this isn't one of them. If you insist on allowing yourself to be lured ever-deeper down this rabbit hole to nowhere, I can only say: YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Thanks again, Lance Payette, for your fine work in digging up the various pieces of banking information relating to this "Postal Money Order" topic.
And I think it's appropriate at this point in time, nearly two years after my involvement in these PMO discussions began, to again ask this question that I first asked a year and a half ago:
"How many things that appear to be legitimate about the Hidell money order does it take for a stubborn CTer to admit that the money order is, in fact, very likely a legitimate document?" -- DVP; January 9, 2016
JIM HARGROVE SAID:
There are no bank endorsements on it [the CE788 money order].
JASON WARD SAID:
Incorrect - there is a bank endorsement on the money order -- THE ONLY ONE that is required, an endorsement to the order of a bank:
PAY TO THE ORDER OF THE FIRST NATIONAL BANK OF CHICAGO
JIM HARGROVE SAID:
[Quoting from a previously-cited regulation...]
"...or endorsed to the order of any bank, banker or trust company, or with some similar endorsement."
JASON WARD SAID:
The endorsement matches the guidelines you posted.
I work at a bank. First of all - checks and money orders are processed all the time with NO endorsement whatsoever. All the endorsement does is provide a legal chain of recourse should the check turn out bad. Endorsements SHOULD be present, but quite often they are not.
Second of all - commercial depositors always endorse their checks [in effect] twice - once to themselves, and once again to their bank. JUST AS KLEIN's did.
In any case - the endorsement on the money order is correct, it is all that is needed - both then and now.
[...]
Here's a sample valid endorsement today.
It's the same as in 1963 - it's exactly like the Klein's endorsement.
The commercial depositor typically stamps* an endorsement paying to the order of their bank - just like Klein's:
* Commercial depositors are more often rendering paper checks into electronic form and soon the esoteric knowledge around bank endorsements will be lost.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Finally! We get to hear from someone who works in a bank! I was beginning to think no one with your occupation would ever show up at this forum.
Thank you, Jason.
DAVID VON PEIN LATER SAID:
Perhaps banker Jason Ward can shed some light on the concept of "cash letters" and "bulk transfers" of U.S. Postal Money Orders.
JASON WARD SAID:
Sorry, we barely submit anything in paper form anymore and although I recall bulk transfers from earlier in my career, I don't have any details to share. I respond to you because you have a grip on rational thought -however- the whole topic should be at most two posts long: a non-banker asking for a banker's opinion followed by an answer in the next post.
If you don't believe ME, ok, simply print out the back of the money order and bring it to your bank and ask if this is a valid endorsement. The fact is with a large commercial depositor, no one at any stage of processing is checking the endorsement - it could be a scribble, it could be in Chinese, it could be missing entirely. The endorsement means almost nothing (in this case), likewise any "missing" endorsement or ABA number means nothing.
The Fed promulgated guidelines and has since time began never enforced them in routine daily transactions. Then and now, processing occurs without signatures, with missing dates, and with all kinds of arguably invalid attributes. To imagine Klein's is in on the assassination is why CTers are seen as the lunatic fringe.
Imagining you can read a tiny snippet of federal regulations and become an expert on check processing without any bank experience is ridiculous.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Thanks for your response, Jason.
DAVID VON PEIN ALSO SAID:
To anyone who is still awake and reading this.... If you haven't pulled all of
your hair out by the roots yet, and if you can possibly stand any more of this never-ending squabbling concerning the topics of "The Money Order" and
"The Rifle", click any of the links provided below (which represent all of the original source links for everything written on this webpage). But keep plenty of aspirin handy. (NOTE -- Some of these links below are no longer working for one reason or another.)
David Von Pein
October 24-28, 2015 [The Education Forum]
November 7-15, 2015 [alt.assassination.jfk]
November 7-9, 2015 [The Education Forum]
November 9, 2015 [Amazon.com]
November 10, 2015 [Amazon.com]
November 10-12, 2015 [The Education Forum]
November 12-21, 2015 [The Education Forum]
November 14-21, 2015 [JFK Assassination Forum]
November 16-18, 2015 [The Education Forum]
November 20, 2015 [alt.assassination.jfk]
November 21, 2015 [JFK Assassination Forum]
December 1, 2015 [Amazon.com]
December 2-24, 2015 [The Education Forum]
December 3-23, 2015 [JFK Assassination Forum]
December 6, 2015 [alt.assassination.jfk]
December 6, 2015 [JFK Assassination Forum]
January 8-16, 2016 [The Education Forum]
January 9-11, 2016 [The Education Forum]
January 10-11, 2016 [The Education Forum]
February 20-29, 2016 [The Education Forum]
February 23-25, 2016 [The Education Forum]
March 4-6, 2016 [The Education Forum]
June 2-3, 2016 [The Education Forum]
August 16-22, 2016 [The Education Forum]
May 13, 2017 [The Education Forum]
April 23-25, 2018 [The Education Forum]
![[Regulation No.] 11](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglYfQ5FNJcpytYmKXj9Ku6F2afgSrZKC8fvcCqjYAPa0FXtilhHiRogYYMaIvFxroHLQ27YdBUzeTe6pbJGaUrIXaPolHRAtA6nw0kU4Pc3O__zsB3TYq2iqZXO8esQGeV2M8DBTVZ6mwE/s1600/FRB-Regulation-11.png){kind=link}
