Implications of the Encrypted Communication
Posted May 8, 2000
The appearance of intrigue surrounding the reported defection of Lee Harvey Oswald suggests many possibilities.

Immediate Responses

My first thoughts were that Oswald was an agent and the encrypted communication was a dangle enhancement. My examination of The New York Times articles on the defection of Robert E. Webster allowed the dangle theory. The October 20, 1959-article, article, "AMERICAN PICKS LIFE IN THE SOVIET," (3) contained the error "C.E. Webster, the father, said no telephone call has yet been received. He and his wife said: ceived. He and his wife said:" I wondered if the editors mangled the lines to give the appearance of last-minute changes.

Naturally, new speculations soon replaced my initial thoughts. Both articles on Webster and Oswald contained errors. No one could prove these errors were intentional. However, the November 3, 1959-article on the defection of Oswald was adjacent to a Nat Sherman' advertisement with an irrefutable encrypted message. I speculated that they gave Oswald special treatment because he was a real defector.

After a while, I began to rationalize the encrypted communication was a hoax that someone implanted in the microfilm record of The New York Times after the assassination of President Kennedy. I found this explanation a relief. No longer did I carry the burden of explanation or exploration. I continued with an unrelated line of research for the next two years.

Meditated Responses

I came to realize that the assassination of President Kennedy would have caused every U.S. Government agency who could have had contact with Lee Harvey Oswald to conduct an extensive search of their records. If the encrypted communication was the product of U.S. Intelligence activity, it would have been found and deleted from the microfilm record of The New York Times. The failure of the U.S. Intelligence community to delete the encrypted communication of November 3, 1959 from the record of The New York Times forced me to discount the dangle theory.

Some critics claim members of the U.S. Intelligence community intentionally inserted the encrypted communication into the microfilm record after the assassination of President Kennedy. Their purpose was to manufacture false proof of the independence between the U.S. Intelligence and Oswald. This disinformation argument is more difficult but possible to evaluate.

Background of the encrypted communication

During the ten years preceding November 3, 1959, Nat Sherman published about fifteen erroneous advertisements. His errors included unbalanced quotation marks (4) and unbalanced parentheses. (5) He misspelled words by omitting a letter (6) or transposing two letters. (7) In one advertisement, Nat Sherman transposed two lines of text. (8) Some Nat Sherman' advertisements contained misplaced periods. (9) One Nat Sherman' advertisement had a slash in place of a space (10) and other advertisements had an illegible letter. (11) I doubt that anyone can prove these errors were intentional.

However, the Nat Sherman' advertisement of May 26, 1953 contained intentional anomalies. (12) The closing quotation marks in "It's A Boy" contained symbols of unequal font size and the opening quotation marks in "It's A Girl,"contained three instead of two symbols.

Nat Sherman used a font similar to Times New Roman that had different symbols for open and closed quotation marks. The closed quotation marks resembled two apostrophes, printed side by side and the open quotation marks looked like the close quotation marks turned upside down. Nat Sherman had to manufacture the three-symbol open quotation marks because his open quotation marks contained symbols that differed from the apostrophe. He also needed to produce close quotation marks with the first symbol larger than the second. Nat Sherman deliberately embedded two characters that did not belong to our language in his advertisement.

The inclusion of an encrypted message in the Nat Sherman' advertisement of November 3, 1959 was not an isolated occurrence. The existence of just one precedent, the encrypted communication in the advertisement of May 26, 1953, is proof of an ongoing clandestine activity probably for the private sector. Nat Sherman embedded elusive messages in his advertisements that escaped detection for four decades. Probably, we would never have detected Nat Sherman's activities if Lee Harvey Oswald did not become the accused assassin of President Kennedy.

The association of the November 3, 1959-encrypted communication with an ongoing activity renders the disinformation explanation implausible. U.S. Intelligence would have carefully researched any intentionally planted disinformation. Probably they would have found the adjacently between the erroneous Nat Sherman' advertisement of November 28, 1951 (11) and the article, "Slansky Is Seized By Prague As Spy," (13) somewhat disturbing. Alternately they would have been highly embarrassed by the adjacency of the article, "14 Purged Reds Go On Trial In Prague" (14) and the November 21, 1952-Nat Sherman' advertisement. (8) The most damaging discovery they would have found was the association between the irrefutable encrypted communication in the Nat Sherman' advertisement of May 26, 1953 and the front page article, "Rosenberg Appeal Denied For 3D Time By Supreme Court." (15) There goes the disinformation theory.

The encrypted communication of May 26, 1953 weakens the hoax theory of the encrypted communication of November 3, 1959. Similarity between these two irrefutable encrypted communications almost demands that any prankster had foreknowledge of the advertisement from May 26, 1953. The alternate explanation that both encrypted communications were part of the same hoax avoids the problem of foreknowledge but does not explain the necessity of an elaborate prank. In fact the entanglement of the encrypted communication of November 3, 1959 with a previous encrypted communication reduces the veracity of the hoax theory.

Motive for the encrypted communication

The immediate cause of the encrypted communication of November 3, 1959 was the publication by The New York Times of the November 1, 1959-article, "Ex-Marine Requests Soviet Citizenship." (16) This article described Oswald's attempted defection the previous day at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, discussed the aborted defection of Nicholas Pertrulli, the completed defection of Robert Webster and, ended with the statement, "The rest of this dispatch was held in censorship."

Nat Sherman revealed the urgency surrounding the defection of Lee Harvey Oswald by producing the encrypted communication of November 3, 1959. He did not produce an advertisement with unbalanced quotation marks or unbalanced parentheses. Nor did Nat Sherman misspell a word or transpose two lines of text.

He did not misplace a period, substitute a slash for a space, or include an illegible letter. Nat Sherman did not use any of these methods to produce a debatable message. Instead, Nat Sherman manufactured proof of his ongoing clandestine activities. He did this intentionally for some purpose that lies outside the scope of the November 3, 1959-encrypted communication.

Source: The New York Times

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Last Updated on December 4, 2008 by Herbert Blenner