A Conspiracy of Identities — Harvey & Lee

[Wokeman]

“One day, I was watching a television programme that dealt with the history of spies and espionage. One segment of the programme was devoted to Marta Hari, a young French woman who was a professional dancer in the early 1900s. She had been recruited by French intelligence to spy on the Germans, but while on tour in Germany was recruited by German intelligence to spy on the French — a classic double agent. The Germans sent Mata Hari to Berlin for espionage training, and found a ‘double’ to take her place on dancing tours throughout Europe. Nobody realized that Mata Hari had been impersonated. While spying on the French Mata Hari was arrested and charged with espionage. A French court found her guilty and she was executed. The significance of Mata Hari is that intelligence agencies used “doubles”over 100 years ago.

Another segment of the television programme dealt with a spy operating in Britain in the early 1960s. He was born Konan Trofimovich Molodi, in Moscow in 1922, and was the son of a science writer. In 1929, at the age of 7, he was sent to Berkeley, California to live with his aunt, who posed as his mother. While in the US young Molodi mastered the English language and became quite familiar with American culture, customs and history.

In 1939, at the age of 17, Molodi returned to the Soviet Union. He was given a commission in the Soviet Navy and began training in espionage. In 1954, at the age of 32, he was provided with fake documents and given the identity of a deceased Canadian citizen named Gordon Arnold Lonsdale. Molodi/Lonsdale soon boarded a Soviet grain ship for Vancouver, Canada, where, upon arrival, he fake documents allowed him to enter the country and live for a year.

In February 1955, Molodi/Lonsdale journeyed to England and enrolled in the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies. While at school, he started a business that rented jukeboxes and manufactured bubblegum machines. His business provided him with access to a Royal Navy base in Portsmouth, but his real mission was to spy out British defence secrets at the Royal Navy’s underwater weapons facility.

In 1961, Lonsdale and four of his colleagues were arrested and charged with espionage. When British authorities checked immigration records they learned that Lonsdale had emigrated from Canada to Britain in 1955. They asked Canadian authorities to conduct a background search on Lonsdale and learned that he was born near the small town of Cobalt, Ontario, near the Quebec-Ontario border. The town was populated by less than 1000 inhabitants that consisted of itinerant miners, prospectors, ranchers and local farmers.

In the 1920s, it was common practice to register the birth of a child at the local church, provided the parents were attendees. If the parents were not attendees, then the birth of a child may not have been registered anywhere. This made the identification of people born in remote Canadian regions, such as Lonsdale in Cobalt, Ontario, prime candidates for imposture.

When Canadian authorities arrived in Cobalt they soon located Emanuel Lonsdale, who was living at Kirkland Lake. Lonsdale told the authorities that he and his former wife, Olga, had a child they named Gordon Arnold Lonsdale. Emanuel and Olga separated in 1932 and she departed for Finland with their young son, who died en route. Had it not been for Emanuel Lonsdale, the Canadian authorities might never have learned that the real Gordon Lonsdale had died as an infant, since his death occurred outside of Canada. The Soviet police (KGB), upon learning of Gordon Lonsdale’s death, created fake documents using his name and gave them to Kolon Molodi.

The background information provided by Canadian authorities helped to convict Molodi/Lonsdale and four members of his spy ring of espionage. Molodi/Lonsdale was sentenced to 25 years in prison but, in 1964, was exchanged for British agent Greville Wynn. Lonsdale died several years later in Moscow, from natural causes and was publicly acknowledged as a “Hero of the Soviet Union”.

The story of Molodi/Lonsdale provides a rare opportunity to follow the life of a spy whose recruitment and grooming began at an early age. His relocation to the US for nine years, intelligence training in Russia, emigration to Canada and Britain, his vending machine business, his arrest and imprisonment — every aspect of Molodi/Lonsdale’s life revolved around his life-long career as a spy. I realized that if Russian intelligence agencies began grooming people at such a young age, then our own intelligence agencies were certainly capable of running similar operations.

That was a case of the use of a stolen identity in order to achieve a specific goal and there is another method employed by the world’s intelligence agencies to score success over the opposing side — it is the use of “doubles” especially identical same sex twins and “look-alikes”. One book “Castro’s Final Hour” contained photographs of Cuba’s top spies in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, Antonio and Patricio DelLaGuardia, who were identical twin brothers. From this and other books, I learned that identical twins and “doubles” are used by modern day intelligence agencies and were used over 2,000 years ago in ancient China.

The use of twins allows an intelligence service to place “one person” in different places at the same time. The first twin could be involved in an illegal or clandestine operation, while the second twin was in a different place with people who could provide an alibi if necessary. If the first twin was identified by witnesses as having committed a crime, then he/she could be apprehended by the authorities. When questioned by police, the first twin would simply provide the names of witnesses who were with him/his twin in a different place when the crime was committed. Subsequently, the first twin would be released. Unless the authorities knew of the existence of the second twin (and the success of such an operation relies on the fact that it is not known) it would be very difficult to charge the first twin and both twins would walk away. A similar but more sinister operation could involve one of the twins, “C” (criminal) committing a crime while the second twin, “P” (the Patsy) was in a different location and knew nothing about what had happened. Twin “C” would commit the crime in the presence of witnesses, but twin “P” would be identified as the culprit and subsequently arrested. “P” would adamantly deny any involvement in the crime, but with numerous witnesses his denials would not be believed. If the crime were serious, (as in the assassination of a head of state), and the “Patsy” were killed before he had an opportunity to tell the authorities about his twin then the truth about the crime might never be known.

I wondered if the “Lee Harvey Oswald” who was accused of assassinating President Kennedy had a background similar to Molodi/Lonsdale. Was this Russian speaking man among the tens of thousands of European refugees brought to the United States after WWII ended? Was he resettled in New York City together with his father and uncle, who may have been involved in domestic intelligence operations? Was he given the name of Lee Harvey Oswald by the CIA? Did he live in the same cities and attend the same schools as the real Lee Harvey Oswald for the purpose of assuming his identity 7 years later and “defecting” to the Soviet Union? If the real Lee Harvey Oswald and a foreign born look-alike were recruited by the CIA as teenagers, then I needed to search for documents that showed indications of two Oswalds from the early 1950s to the death of the Russian-speaking Oswald on November 24th, 1963.

My research has led me to the conclusion that there were indeed, two young boys, American born Lee Harvey Oswald and an eastern european refugee who spoke Russian and was given the name “Harvey Oswald” were selected by the CIA for inclusion in a super-secret project known as MK-UlTRA. The plan was to merge the identity a Russian-speaking refugee with that of the American born Lee Harvey Oswald over a period of many years. If the merging of the identities was successful the CIA could then place a native Russian-speaking young man, with an American identity, in the Soviet Union as a spy.

The young man known to the world as “Lee Harvey Oswald” successfully “defected” to the Soviet Union in 1959, and returned to the US with a Russian wife in 1962. A year and a half later, this young man was set up as a “patsy” in a elaborate scheme engineered by career CIA officials to assassinate President John F Kennedy.

Following the assassination the FBI and the Warren Commission collected and pieced together background information from the Russian-speaking refugee and American born Lee Harvey Oswald that was used to create a fictionalized person we know as “Lee Harvey Oswald”. Two days after the assassination of President Kennedy the Russian-speaking refugee, Harvey Oswald was shot and killed by Dallas night-club owner/CIA gun-runner, Jack Ruby. American born Lee Oswald. was, and may still be, very much alive.”

Excerpt from Harvey & Lee — How the CIA Framed Oswald, by John Armstrong.