JFK Assassination: The Hidell Draft Card

One thing that has nagged at me for the last 50+ years is the "Hidell Draft Card" that was allegedly found in the possession of Lee Harvey Oswald, which neatly tied him into the receipt of the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle sent to the Hidell PO box. It did tie up neatly several threads of the "investigation", but I don't think I've ever seen a real serious analysis of that card itself.

Take a look at that card. It kind of looks like a "regular issue" draft card, except for one glaring exception: The photograph.

Selective Service registration cards did not have photographs.

Putting aside the questions as to whether that photo really is LHO, but assuming the Warren Report is correct and Oswald created that phony draft card so he'd have some kind of photo ID, the question is this: Why would he go out of his way to create a phony ID that pretty much every male in the United States would look at askance, since draft cards NEVER contained a photograph? Every male over the age of 18, at least since the end of WWII, was issued a draft card. Who would not question the validity of one that had a photograph?

So what do those numbers on draft cards indicate? Like Social Security numbers, they were an easy way to identify an individual.

Mine was 45 23 45 152

First box -- state (e.g., Washington is 45), arranged alphabetically (Alaska and Hawaii were not states when this was first set up, which is why the count is off now; Washington should be 47).
Second box -- Draft board number within the state (23), usually consisting of a county or similar administrative subdivision.
Third box -- Year of birth (1945).
Fourth box -- Numerical count of people registering for that birth year -- (I was the 152nd person to register).

"Hidell" Selective Service Number: 42 224 39 5321

Unless I miss my guess, 42 was Utah (Texas was 41), and it's doubtful there were 224 local draft boards in Utah. Oswald was born in 1939, but again it's doubtful that there were over 5,000 men at that draft board born in 1939.

So it's kind of odd that Oswald would put a photo on his already-obviously fake Hidell draft card, when literally every male in the country knew what one was supposed to look like. This really doesn't pass the "smell test".

I don't know, of course, and as usual, what it really means. It's just another anomaly in an event that is so chock full of anomalies that they are spilling out over the top.