OSWALD'S INNOCENCE AND DISAPPEARING MINOX

OSWALD'S INNOCENCE AND DISAPPEARING FILES

Dr. Howard Platzman wrote an article about "The Minox Camera" after I told him I had seen Lee Harvey Oswald's Minox--and even seen Lee take a photograph with it. But that article, as have many defending Oswald, has vanished from the Internet.

I first gave detailed information about the Minox to Platzman and to Martin Shackelford. Later, I repeated it to Sixty Minutes investigators in the presence of Dr. Platzman, Mike Wallace, Don Hewitt and Phil Scheffler.

I will be asking Dr. Platzman to send me a copy of his article, so it can be published again. Meanwhile, some information about Lee's Minox can be found on the Internet, such as offered by Ralph Thomas, below. I have added a few comments of my own to this article.

WE NEED TO ASK: WHAT WAS THE MINOX CAMERA LIKE, AND WHY IS IT SIGNIFICANT THAT THE 'PENNILESS' OSWALD OWNED ONE?

In his fine article,"The History And Evolution Of Spy and Investigative Photography"

by Ralph Thomas (see the article HERE) we quickly learn that a Minox was

a SPY CAMERA:

Minox Spy Camera 1940's, 1950's,1960's Known throughout the world as the subminiature camera to have, the Minox spy camera was in the hands of almost all intelligence agents and spies in the 1940's, 1950's and 1960's. The camera was very good at taking close up document photography. The camera was so small and so good for it's hay-day that it had restricted sales to governmental and military intelligence agencies in many parts of the world such as the United States. In the late 1960's through the 1980's if you were a private-eye and had one, you had the very latest high tech subminiature camera on the market. They were also very expensive.

Minox Spy Cameras stayed king of the subminiature camera world and released an endless

selection of options including a high end light meter, various flash attachments, a subminiature

tripod, telephoto lens and a right angle lens."

Ralph Thomas leads the reader to his logical analysis of the infamous

"backyard photos" and why they are faked. You can read about his analysis HERE.

Thomas goes on to say: "What's even more revealing is that Oswald himself owned a Minox Spy Camera. It was found among his possessions after the assassination, inventoried by the Dallas Police and then quickly covered up.

Some claim that the photo does NOT reveal a Minox Spy Camera, only a Minox Spy Camera Case and an Exposed Minox Light Meter. Ok, I will concede that fact! You can not see the camera. However, I have yet to know one person who would have had a Minox spy camera case and a light meter without the camera. Aside from the Minox, the photo (below) reveals a number of other interesting objects including other cameras, film, various small binoculars and other spy type photo and optic equipment. All owned by a man who was a minimum wage inventory clerk who lived in a rooming house. Yea right!"

He shows us the official photo made by the Dallas Police:

Minox camera case,Minox film cassettes, light meter and other camera cases...with cameras inside, of course...these are expensive cameras--so why did Oswald supposedly have his photo taken with a cheap, inferior dime-store camera (Imperial Reflex)?

Could it be that the police didn't realize that Oswald, who was known to be employed at a low hourly rate, would not have been able to afford an expensive camera? How wrong they were! Lee Harvey Oswald was making $400 a month working for the FBI and the CIA, as he indicated to me himself when he gave me his income for an entire month ($400 in $20 bills) so I would have funds to meet him in Mexico, should plans go as expected (they didn't). That's equal to $2,880 in 2011 funds, $34,560 income "on the side" --since Oswald typically held low-paying jobs to have a visible source of income.

But I digress. What the writer, above, failed to mention is that a Minox camera did show up in the Paine garage weeks later, in January, that detective Gus Rose insisted that he had indeed found a Minox with film in it inside Lee's seabag in that garage, and that he knew the difference between a camera with film in it, and a light meter.

Around 1978, an article written by Earl Golz gives us pertinent information about the Minox. Researcher A. J. Weberman had successfully petitioned to get the photos the FBI held that had come from "Oswald's Minox." Here is a portion of that article:

OSWALD PICTURES RELEASED BY FBI PHOTOGRAPHS FROM SMALL SPY CAMERA REVEALED AFTER ALMOST 15 YEARS

By EARL GOLZ

Photographs developed from Minox spy camera film found among Lee Harvey Oswald's personal possessions have been released by the FBI after being suppressed almost 15 years. About 25 images shot in foreign countries on two rolls from the miniature German-made camera were made available by the FBI under a Freedom of Information Act request by Alan Weberman, an independent assassination researcher in New York City.

More than 20 prints developed from one roll show civilian scenes apparently in Europe. Five shots from the other roll were military scenes either in the Far East or Central America. A Minox camera with a cassette film roll inside disappeared from Oswald's possessions after the FBI took custody of the property in 1963 from Dallas police, The News earlier had disclosed.

THE BUREAU LATER TRIED UNSUCCESSFULLY TO PRESSURE POLICE INTO CHANGING THEIR INVENTORY LIST TO READ MINOX LIGHT METER, NOT CAMERA, according to detective Gus Rose who said he found the camera in Oswald's seabag at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Michael Paine in Irving. The FBI had indicated the two rolls it developed were found separately in tin containers with ribbons tied around them. House Assassinations Committee investigators recently interviewed a former FBI agent who had custody of the Oswald property when the camera with film INSIDE DISAPPEARED, The New has learned. The former agent, Warren de Brueys, monitored Oswald's activities in the summer of 1963. He came to Dallas for two months to assist the Warren Commission investigation of the assassination.

"Monitoring is a word I would be reluctant to use," de Brueys told The News. "I never personally met him (Oswald), never knowingly personally talked to him. And I say that advisedly because - who knows - I don't think it happened. He may have called on the phone and made an inquiry one time without identifying himself."

===Note: de Brueys lied. He knew Lee personally.===

Near the end of the article, we read this:

TWO MONTHS LATER, ON JAN. 27, 1964, FBI AGENT THOMAS W. LENIHAN IN WASHINGTON TOLD J. GORDON SHANKLIN, AGENT IN CHARGE OF THE DALLAS FBI OFFICE, THAT DE BRUEYS' INVENTORY OF NOV. 26, 1963, SHOWED A MINOX CAMERA AMONG OSWALD'S POSSESSION, ACCORDING TO A LENIHAN MEMO. "I advised Shanklin that our laboratory claims that they did not have a Minox camera and that this item should be a Minox light meter," Lenihan's memo stated. "I requested that DL (Dallas FBI office) resolve whether or not a Minox camera was among the effects of Oswald. "

On 1-28-64 Shanklin advised Inspector Moore (Dallas police detective H.M. Moore) that Oswald did not have a Minox camera; that this was a Minox light meter." Two days after Lenihan told Shanklin the camera was a light meter, FBI agents visited the Paine home in Irving where Oswald's personal possessions were found and located a Minox camera in a coffee can in the garage. Mrs. Ruth Paine identified the camera as her husband's. The camera, which Michael Paine considered "unworkable" because of shutter damage, was forwarded to the Washington FBI office with "other evidence," according to an FBI teleprinter message dated Jan. 31, 1964. The message said Dallas police were "aware that no Minox camera (was) obtained in search" of the Paine residence and garage on Nov. 22-23, 1963. Detective Rose, however, remains adamant he found a Minox camera with film in it in Oswald's seabag when he made the initial search at the Paine home.

==Among Rose's many statements that he had indeed found a Minox is his mention of Ruth Paine watching him as he searched through Lee Oswald's possessions in the garage:

MORIARTY - This Minox camera. Was that with Ruth Paine's camera equipment?
ROSE - No, it was in the sea bag.
MORIARTY - Oh, in the sea bag.
ROSE - Ruth Paine explained to me, she stood, she stood right there while we searched. And she explained that everything in that sea bag and a couple of boxes that were there was Oswald's and she never had any objection to any search of that. The only time she objected was when we searched her bedroom where a lot of her camera equipment was. She did not object when we searched Marina Oswald's bedroom, the one she used.

===McAdams says that Officer Rose just doesn't know a camera from a light meter, even though Rose described removing a roll of film from the Minox. The Minox light meter is a box with a dial, but no openings. McAdams tries to explain the disappearing Minox like this (I've placed in bold face the most important part of his argument):

"The camera and the case were listed in the original DPD list, but only the case is visible, so the camera but not the case has to disappear for the photograph. Also a light meter that is not on the DPD list at all has to appear from nowhere for the photo. After the photo is taken the FBI and DPD make their joint inventory list. The light meter has to disappear again along with the camera case, but the Minox camera itself would have to reappear for the FBI/DPD inventory list. Now on the way to the FBI in Washington, the camera has to disappear again, while the light meter and camera case have to reappear. If the assumption that the FBI made originally that the Minox light meter was mistaken for a camera is correct, then there would be no need for this convoluted scenario."

==The assumption, of course, forces us to say officer Rose was extremely stupid, for not once, but twice, the camera is listed in police inventory, and Rose simply refused to be bullied by the FBI to say it was a light meter. The easiest solution is not that an experienced detective would make such an error, but that the FBI substituted a Minox light meter for the Minox camera. Then they could do as they pleased with the photos, which might have been, for all they knew, spy photos, until analyzed. Can't have Oswald linked to spying, now, can we?

==now, back to the excerpted article...where Michael Paine steps forth to try to claim the camera is his, but will NOT take responsibility for any of the photos found...====

Michael Paine told The News he recalled taking photos in Korea while he was in the army in the early 1950s and later on a trip to Europe, but not with a Minox camera. He couldn't remember taking a photo of a tanker anchored offshore mountainous terrain, he said.

==Of course Mr. Paine couldn't remember taking such a photo, even though he has to claim the camera as his own. That camera will later disappear, according to Paine, stolen from him along with other cameras. In the National Archives, a Minox camera appears, but it -==just like the "Paine" Minox, is damaged! Damaged in the same place, too--so that the serial number cannot be seen. What a coincidence! How remarkable! The serial number of the Minox Michael Paine claimed belonged to him happened to be quite unique, as explained below:

The Minox III camera, serial number 27259, was turned over to the FBI on January

31, 1964 by Michael Paine (found, he said, in a coffee can in his

garage) ... ...yep, folks, the same garage which police had thoroughly searched --

several times---the same garage where Lee's brother, Robert, also in January,

"found" ... the cheap Imperial Reflex camera -- the one that finally linked

the backyard photos to Lee (thanks to Robert's search of the garage!).

Here's the receipt for the fortuitous, convenient, discovery of the missing Minox:

.

Warren Commission apologist John McAdams, who says Oswald did it, and calls anyone who comes to a different conclusion a "conspiracy buff," published this comment about the Minox and its serial number:

"The serial number reported by the FBI is controversial for several reasons. This camera is purported to be in the National Archives today, but the camera has been damaged and can not be opened. The serial number can only be viewed when the camera is open. The question then is how did the FBI report a serial number, when the number can not be seen. In addition the Minox III was a newer version of the Minox II. The serial number for the Minox II from 20379 to 31500 while Model III serial numbers started with 31275 and ended with 58499, so the 27259 number can not be the number on a model III. The question then becomes where did the FBI get this 27259 serial number?"

===Perhaps the number itself was reported for Lee's Minox before it was decided a substitute Minox was needed, a Minox III. Was the number then attributed to the Minox III that "belonged" to Michael Paine? Problem: if the camera is opened, the serial number could be seen to be different.

But Paine's camera was ''broken' and could not be opened. Nevertheless, the FBI is comfortable assigning the serial number to it--and even showing the camera that belonged to Michael Paine later to Lee's wife, Marina, to see if she could identify it. Not surprisingly, she could not/would not.

The Minox on display in the National Archives is damaged so we cannot see its serial number.

The other option -- McAdams' -- is that the FBI pretended to make up a serial number for the camera. Or for another camera, now lost. Every way it's examined, the FBI doesn't come up smelling like roses in this matter (as usual, when trying to dig up the truth about the Kennedy assassination)==

I'M A WITNESS

In my book, Me & Lee, I speak of the Minox. I encountered Lee's Minox when Kerry Thornley took a Polaroid photo of us, which Lee immediately destroyed. Kerry commented that Lee "still" had the camera, which means Lee had the camera when they were both based at El Toro, California. That's also where Gerry Hemming mentioned seeing Lee, and he, too, said Lee had a Minox, though his story of how Lee got it is very strange, indeed. In 1963, Xerox machines were few and far between. Lee told me he used the Minox to copy documents. He said he developed his own film.

Witness: "Lee's Minox that made 150 photos at once." (No way!)

Lee also said something that I simply must have misremembered. I thought Lee told me that his Minox could take over 150 photos at once. I now know this is clearly impossible, unless somebody out there has heard of a radically modified Minox. Martin Shackelford, a researcher who knows his photos, corrected me when I stated this in 1999: that was impossible, he said. It's an example of memory failure on my part: I've been accused of having too good a memory, but in this case, memory failed me. However, maybe Lee had told me he had taken 150 photos at one time with the Minox, using the required rolls of film to do so. I, knowing nothing about the Minox except what it looked like, just misunderstood.

However, I saw Lee's Minox on several occasions. Both Shackelford and Dr. Howard Platzman received this information by email, in 1999, and Shackelford printed it out.