One of my meager claims to fame is my discovery, in the Warren Commission volumes, of the peculiar alleged photo of Lee Harvey Oswald from 1956 at the time he completed Marine boot camp, standing against a height-wall chart marked in inches; the photo, which exists only as a poor Xerox copy, reveals that Oswald is 5'9" tall and has a HEAD THAT IS 13 INCHES TALL, with shoulders only 4'4" off the ground!
I pointed this out to the House Select Committee on Assassinations in the late 70s, and their "experts" performed amusing gyrations* to demonstrate that such a photo could actually be taken, but they did not address the question of WHY anyone would want to do so. They also "produced" an 18x24 "photo" exhibit (Vol.2, page 408) allegedly made from the "original negative" (which, however, they failed to produce), "proving" that such a photo existed. I examined the exhibit carefully at close range, and believe that it is probably a pencil rendering in the manner of Ida Dox. If they had the original negative (best evidence) as they claimed, it should have been entered in evidence! All this has been shown for years in my slide presentation, as well as my video "The Many Faces of Lee Harvey Oswald."
Over the years, a pattern has emerged which may give a clue to the "why" of the "Case of the 13-inch Head". A number of years ago at a bookstore, I glanced through a book about CIA flier Francis Gary Powers of U-2 fame. There in the photo section was an Air Force ID photo of Powers with a 13-inch head! I made a mental note of this, but unfortunately did not bother to buy the book. Recently I asked JFK researcher numero uno Mary Ferrell if she could locate the Powers photo, and of course it was in her vast collection. The book was "The Trial of the U-2", published in Moscow in the early 60s, and Mary sent me a Xerox of the photo.
Recently I also received from researcher Richard Bartholomew a service ID photo of George Wing, a man Bartholomew suspects of being an intelligence agent connected to the JFK case (see Bartholomew story immediately following this). He thinks Wing may have been the owner of a Nash Rambler station wagon seen in Dealey Plaza on November 22. Wing's ID photo is virtually identical to the Oswald photo. Both measure the subject at 5'9" with a 13-inch long head and shoulders at 4'4"! Comparison with the Powers photo shows the only difference is that Powers is shown to be 5'10" by the wall chart (although the typewritten height on the Powers ID card lists him at 5'9 1/4"!; also, Oswald typewritten Marine records list his height at 5'11"!). These three guys are depicted as grotesque circus freaks, with huge heads and shoulders close to the ground!
With such uniform depiction of 13-inch heads, one might suspect a common origin for these three photos. Not so. Oswald: Marine photo. Powers: Air Force photo. Wing: Navy photo. All were taken at different times. Obviously none of the photos is made with the subject standing with his back directly against the wall chart, or else all would show normal 9-inch heads, as Oswald does in his New Orleans arrest photo. Then why such a commonality? Surely not all service photographers are trained to uniformly show all subjects with 13-inch heads. I checked with Mike Tobey, a local friend who was in Oswald's platoon in boot camp at San Diego, and Mike commented that the photo's date corresponded with the end of their basic training, and that he did not remember such a photo having such a picture made of himself. He's going to search all his service papers and see if he can locate a similar photo.
I have tentatively concluded that ID photos of persons with 13-inch heads may be some sort of unique intelligence agency "marker" to subtly identify the bearer as an intelligence agent. Here we have Oswald, Powers and Wing, all with uniform 13-inch heads; and Powers is CIA, and Oswald and Wing are believed to have intelligence agency connections by many researchers. It is something which does not easily register with the observer unless you are looking for it (I had a copy of the Oswald picture on my office wall for many months until one night while working late it suddenly occurred to me to count the number of inches on the chart. I was stunned when I counted 13-inches as Oswald's head length!)
Can anyone else come up with other such photos? Do genuine service ID photos against wall charts (if actually taken of all service men) have genuine measurements? Or are all persons on special "intelligence" assignments purposely photographed with 13-inch heads to give them a special secret identification? What do you think?
* HSCA Chief Robert Blakey will not agree with me, but I found these to be "amusing gyrations" in their "experts'" study of the Case of the 13-Inch Head:
Copyright © 1994 by Richard Bartholomew
University of Texas Spanish and Portuguese professor George Gordon Wing is the focal point of a five-year investigation on which I gave an interim report in a self-published manuscript called Possible Discovery of an Automobile Used in the JFK Conspiracy. (see Fair Play, this issue.) The report began as a shorter research paper presented to the Second "Third Decade" Conference in Providence, RI, in June 1993.
It is extraordinarily difficult to summarize for those who are unfamiliar with it without sounding like a raving madman. Suffice it to say that after an additional year of research on my part, and input from the wider research community, the bottom line is that Dr. Wing, now deceased, was trying to communicate personal knowledge about the assassination of President Kennedy in the form of coded "messages in a bottle." The bottle in this case was a 1959, light-colored Rambler station wagon with a luggage rack on top which Dr. Wing purchased on April 26, 1963. Wing's profession, place of employment, car and its purchase date should adequately intrigue the well-read, uninitiated researcher. The real trail started when we learned that he bought the car from a very close friend of then Vice President and Mrs. Lyndon Baines Johnson.
Jack White wrote me in December 1993 after reading my manuscript. He said, "My hypothesis is that Dr. Wing was somehow associated with someone on the 'inside' of the conspiracy and privy somehow to some secret information. But he was probably afraid to go public, so he decided to encode a visual thought-provoking conundrum for the curious. It worked, because it interested you and your friends."
In the manuscript I reported that fellow UT professor John W.F. Dulles, son of John Foster Dulles, whose daughters Wing taught, inherited the family's Hanna Mining Company. After Jack wrote his perceptive hypothesis, I learned that in early 1964, the company's attorney was dealing with a crisis Hanna was having in Brazil. It was taking him away from another pressing matter. The attorney was John J. McCloy and the other pressing matter was the investigation of the murder of John F. Kennedy. The crisis resulted in McCloy attending very few Warren Commission sessions, and in Brazil's 1964 coup d'état.
Last February, I wrote a letter to Jack in which I enclosed a copy of George Wing's military personnel file and photo. I mentioned that I had just noticed the disproportionate head a few days earlier. Jack wrote back with his crypto-ID hypothesis (see previous story on 13-inch heads). While at the National Archives in April, I stumbled upon a study that was done for the HSCA. It was called "Summary of Height and Proportion Studies" by William K. Hartman. It seemed to convincingly show that such discrepancies were common due to a lack of standard procedures among military photographers. That seemed to settle photographic questions about Wing's suspected intelligence background.
But Jack sent me a draft of his "What's the Deal..." story on the 13-inch heads, and after reading it, I realized that Harman's study was the HSCA's "amusing gyrations" to which he referred. The study shows that these variations are common, random, and unpredictable. If true, persons photographed with 13-inch heads should have nothing in common. Certainly the photos of intelligence personnel known to have been involved in the deepest cover operations (like Oswald, Powers, and by necessity, Wing) should not all show 13-inch heads. If they do, it may prove Jack's theory. More comparisons need to be made.
The whole issue became more intriguing when in Box 6 of that same collection of material in the Archives, I found in a folder called "Unidentified Mug Shots" a black and white photo of an unidentified man who looks like George Wing in a military setting. According to a notation of the acetate sleeve and the sleeves of others like it, the photo was apparently taken on No Name Key. It is a medium close-up of his right profile. It jumped out at me because of the photo I took of Wing's left profile in 1990. The resemblance is striking enough to compel me to get professional opinions. With the copy prints I ordered while in Washington, I can now approach researchers who may be able to help determine conclusively whether or not it is a photo of Dr. Wing.
I've put it to every test I know in a three-way comparison between it, my photos of Wing and the Andrew St. George photo of a man wearing a turtleneck shirt in the book The Fish is Red (one of the coded messages mentioned above). If there are any differences, I can't see them. I've done everything from eyeballing various anatomical features to measuring specific landmarks against each other. The most impressive detail is the match between ear anatomies. Unless a computer analysis or a professional forensic artist can show me specifically where I have made mistakes, I am prepared to say they are all George Wing.
As for the 13-inch heads, I think serious investigation should be done.
Return to Main Page
* * *