Thomas Graves

Good questions. Comments regarding specific questions: 5. Did the person who translated the note make any comments about the grammatical quality of the note? It's logical to assume that if the grammar in the note was good, the translator wouldn't necessarily have mentioned it, whereas if the grammar was bad, the translator would have said so. 6. Is it odd in your view that the note is not signed or dated? If the note was written by Oswald, Marina would have recognized the handwriting and known that it had been written by him and put by him in the special place where she (allegedly) found it -- therefore there was no need for his potentially self-incriminating signature. If he indeed was to take a shot at Walker and was either arrested for it or were to go into hiding, Marina would have put "two plus two together" and realized that Oswald had not only written the ominous note but had actually followed through on the dastardly deed alluded to in it, and therefore no potentially self-incriminating date on the letter would have been needed for her to realize that he had written the note about his intentions against Walker. What good would it have done Marina if the note had been signed and/or dated? Should Oswald have signed it "I will love you and Junie forever"? Oswald was known for not dating many missives over the years. If someone forged the note, they could have easily forged Oswald's signature (as it apparently was forged on several other Warren Commission documents and pieces of "evidence") and correctly dated it, as well. 7. Is it odd in your view that there are no Oswald fingerprints on the note? Excellent point. See this analysis by Gil Jesus: http://www.giljesus.com/Walker/note.htm (The only thing I disagree with Gil about in his analysis of the note is whether or not Marina could read English-language newspapers well enough to be able to send to the Russian embassy any articles that might appear in the local newspapers about Oswald's shooting of Walker. I believe Marina only pretended to Ruth Paine that she couldn't speak or read English very well. In fact, in her Warren Commission testimony, Ruth Paine volunteers the information that one of her neighbors noticed that Marina's English seemed to improve so dramatically between October, 1963 and January, 1964, that the neighbor was "amazed". https://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=38&relPageId=498 But I digress...) --Tommy

Peter Dale Scott makes an interesting point: "Perhaps the greatest paradox about the Marine G-2 and ONI records on Oswald is that they show sustained interest in learning more from the State Department about Oswald's alleged renunciation of citizenship; but never, apparently, about his self-confessed offer of espionage." (page 7) http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg%20Subject%20Index%20Files/S%20Disk/Scott%20Peter%20Dale/Item%2002.pdf Taking Scott's statement into consideration, it seems to me that Oswald might have been instructed by Marine G-2 or the ONI to "go to the U.S. Embassy in Moscow right before they close on a Saturday, pretend to try to renounce your citizenship (but don't actually do it so we can easily bring you back after you've done some spying / dangling for us in Russia), and while you're inside the Embassy, where we know the KGB has listening devices, verbally threaten to offer the Soviets 'any information you've acquired as an enlisted radar operator' ". It seems that the Marines and ONI were worried later that Oswald hadn't followed his instructions and had actually renounced his citizenship in Russia, either intentionally or by mistake. Either that, or the Marines / ONI were in some kind struggle with the State Department... --Tommy

I would say Yes. Without a speck of a doubt. But regardless of any psychological evaluation or "historical analysis" you may wish to perform on Mr. Oswald, the clear FACT remains that the handwriting (in Russian) we see in Commission Exhibit No. 1 is positively the handwriting of Lee Harvey Oswald and no one else's (per the various handwriting analysts who have examined that document for the Warren Commission and the HSCA). Do you want to call into question the conclusions reached by ALL of those handwriting experts, Jon? Bottom Line --- Lee Harvey Oswald wrote the words we see in CE1. There's no good (or reasonable) escape hatch for conspiracy theorists in this regard. Which is why I said previously that CE1 is just about the best type of "circumstantial evidence" you can get. Because it is, in effect, Lee Oswald himself telling us that he's about to go out and do something of a criminal nature on the night of April the 10th, 1963. What other kind of activity could possibly explain these words written by Lee Oswald in that CE1 document?: "If I am alive and taken prisoner..." "You can either throw out or give my clothing etc. away." "The Red Cross will help you." "I left you as much money as I could." If ever a note reeked with a person's guilt, Warren Commission Exhibit Number One is it. Is it possible that Oswald shot at General Walker but didn't shoot at JFK? --Tommy

Don, Last night after reading Pat's posted question, I thought about the same big guy as you did in the Croft photo but was too lazy to post my opinion about it. What do you think the guy (Orr?) is holding in his raised hand? BTW, I think that's a Rambler station wagon behind him in the Croft photo. --Tommy

Former HSCA investigator Dan Hardway also presented at the 2014 AARC conference. He says that although George Joannides' supervisor at JMWave was William M. Kent, Joannides reported directly to Helms. Which doesn't make sense to me. I wonder if Kent knew Joannides was reporting directly to Helms. http://aarclibrary.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/dan_hardway_aarc_9_26_14.pdf In the fall of 1962, George Joannides was hand picked by Richard Helms to replace Ross Crozier as the CIA’s DRE case officer in Miami after DRE’s public opposition to the government’s policies during the October, 1962, missile crisis. Joannides reported directly to Helms. Joannides’s registered pseudonym was "Walter D. Newby". His supervisor was "Robert K. Trouchard" [William M. Kent]. --Tommy bumped PS Thanks for confirming Newman's little mistake about Sforza / Tepedino for us, Bill. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. He and you and Scott and Larry and Dan (and others) are to be thanked for opening our eyes on so many things via the arcane and sometimes hard-to-find documents. Keep up the good work. --Tommy

Well, Paul, when thinking about the JFK assassination I'm a conspiracy theorist myself. But, unlike several members of this forum, I don't automatically blame the CIA for what took place in France recently, or what's taking place in eastern Ukraine, or ... --Tommy (Gaaal) Last weekend, Czech President Milos Zeman deplored the warmongering attitude of the Kiev regime, denouncing the CIA-installed Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk as “the prime minister of war.” mycatbirdseat JAN 7 [...] Dear Steven, This is ex-felon (assalt) and recent big time embezzler Yanukovych, whom the Ukrainians threw out of office and into Russian exile last year after his snipers had killed several demonstrators in Maidan Square. Unfortunately this gave Vlad Putin an "excuse" for his clandestine and continuing invasion of eastern Ukraine and his annexation of the Crimean peninsula. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-30777844 --Tommy PS As regards your boy Milos Zeman, he's is a Czech Mafia-connected, alcoholic, brown-noser-of-Putin "joke". He joined the Communist Party in 1968, the same year that Russia and the Warsaw Pact countries invaded Czechoslovakia and put an end to the liberalizing "Prague Spring". Last November, while giving a speech on the 25th anniversary of Czech freedom from communist rule, Zeman was pelted with eggs by his own countrymen and countrywomen who were angry about his communist past, his cozy relations with the Kremlin, and his self-serving hypocrisy. Of course he's an apologist for "Vlad" Putin's actions in Ukraine. He knows which side of his bread gets the lard, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-30087621 edited and bumped

http://www.maryferrell.org/wiki/index.php/State_Secret_Chapter6 Fascinating stuff. I find particularly interesting the inclusion of the word "slender" in the 12:44 police broadcast which described the suspect as (a Robert Webster-like) "5' 10", 165 pounds". I know that a "5' 10", 165 pound man" doesn't signify "fat", but I don't think it means "slender" to most people, either. It's almost as though the Dallas Police Department added the word "slender" to the description given to Police Inspector Sawyer by the mystery "witness" in order to better implicate the downright skinny Oswald who weighed only 131 pounds two days later at his autopsy. (FWIW, Marguerite Oswald said that her son never weighed more than 150 pounds in his life.) --Tommy

Jeff Mackler? The 2006 write-in senatorial candidate for the (Trotskyist) Socialist Action Party? Now there's an objective, unbiased opinion for you -- Jeff Mackler. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_Action_(United_States) LOL --Tommy

Well, Paul, when thinking about the JFK assassination I'm a conspiracy theorist myself. But, unlike several members of this forum, I don't automatically blame the CIA for what took place in France recently, or what's taking place in eastern Ukraine, or ... --Tommy Last weekend, Czech President Milos Zeman deplored the warmongering attitude of the Kiev regime, denouncing the CIA-installed Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk as “the prime minister of war.” mycatbirdseat JAN 7 =================================================== Part of The Best of Print in 2014 http://www.foreignaffairs.com/ Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s Fault The Liberal Delusions That Provoked Putin By John J. Mearsheimer JOHN J. MEARSHEIMER is R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago. See more by this author From our September/October 2014 Issue A man takes a picture as he stands on a Soviet-style star re-touched with blue paint so that it resembles the Ukrainian flag, Moscow, August 20, 2014. (Maxim Shemetov / Courtesy Reuters) ---------------------------------------o According to the prevailing wisdom in the West, the Ukraine crisis can be blamed almost entirely on Russian aggression. Russian President Vladimir Putin, the argument goes, annexed Crimea out of a long-standing desire to resuscitate the Soviet empire, and he may eventually go after the rest of Ukraine, as well as other countries in eastern Europe. In this view, the ouster of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014 merely provided a pretext for Putin’s decision to order Russian forces to seize part of Ukraine. But this account is wrong: the United States and its European allies share most of the responsibility for the crisis. The taproot of the trouble is NATO enlargement, the central element of a larger strategy to move Ukraine out of Russia’s orbit and integrate it into the West. At the same time, the EU’s expansion eastward and the West’s backing of the pro-democracy movement in Ukraine -- beginning with the Orange Revolution in 2004 -- were critical elements, too. Since the mid-1990s, Russian leaders have adamantly opposed NATO enlargement, and in recent years, they have made it clear that they would not stand by while their strategically important neighbor turned into a Western bastion. For Putin, the illegal overthrow of Ukraine’s democratically elected and pro-Russian president -- which he rightly labeled a “coup” -- was the final straw. He responded by taking Crimea, a peninsula he feared would host a NATO naval base, and working to destabilize Ukraine until it abandoned its efforts to join the West. Putin’s pushback should have come as no surprise. After all, the West had been moving into Russia’s backyard and threatening its core strategic interests, a point Putin made emphatically and repeatedly. Elites in the United States and Europe have been blindsided by events only because they subscribe to a flawed view of international politics. They tend to believe that the logic of realism holds little relevance in the twenty-first century and that Europe can be kept whole and free on the basis of such liberal principles as the rule of law, economic interdependence, and democracy. =================================== Register for free to continue reading. Registered users get access to two free articles every month. Register Have an account? Log in. ================= @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Czech President: “Only Poorly Informed People” Don’t Know About Ukraine Coup By Eric Zuesse Global Research, January 05, 2015 ========================= The Czech Republic’s President Milos Zeman said, in an interview, in the January 3rd edition of Prague’s daily newspaper Pravo, that Czechs who think of the overthrow of Ukraine’s President Viktor Yanukovych, on 22 February 2014, as having been like Czechoslovakia’s authentically democratic “Velvet Revolution” are seeing it in a profoundly false light, because, (as Russian Television translated his statement into English) “Maidan was not a democratic revolution.” He said that this is the reason why Ukraine now is in a condition of “civil war,” in which the residents of the Donbass region in Ukraine’s southeast have broken away from the Ukrainian Government. He furthermore said that, “Judging by some of the statements of Prime Minister Yatsenyuk, I think that he is rather a prime minister of war because he does not want a peaceful solution, as recommended by the European Union (EU), but instead prefers to use force.” He added, by way of contrast to Yatsenyuk, the possibility that Ukraine’s President, Petro Poroshenko “might be a man of peace.” So: though Zeman held out no such hope regarding Yatsenyuk (who was Obama’s choice to lead Ukraine), he did for Poroshenko (who wasn’t Obama’s choice, but who became Ukraine’s President despite Obama’s having wanted Yatsenyuk’s sponsor, the hyper-aggressive Yulia Tymoshenko, to win the May 25thPresidential election, which was held only in Ukraine’s pro-coup northwest, but claimed to possess authority over the entire country). What this statement from Zeman indicates is that the European Union is trying to deal with Poroshenko, as the “good cop” in a “good cop, bad cop” routine, with Yatsenyuk playing the bad cop; and, so, the EU’s policies regarding Ukraine will depend upon what comes forth from Poroshenko, not at all upon what comes from the more clearly pro-war, anti-peace, Yatsenyuk. Furthermore, Zeman’s now publicly asserting that the overthrow of Yanukovych was a coup instead of having merely expressed the democratic intentions of most of the Maidan demonstrators, constitutes a sharp break away from U.S. President Barack Obama, who was behind that Ukrainian coup and who endorses its current leaders. Zeman isn’t yet going as far as Hungary’s President Viktor Orban did in his siding with Russia’s President Putin against America’s President Obama, but Zeman is indicating that, unless Obama will get Poroshenko to separate himself more clearly from Yatsenyuk (whom the U.S. State Department’s Victoria Nuland actually selected onFebruary 4th to become Ukraine’s Prime Minister in the coup just 18 days later, and so there can be no reasonable question that he is an Obama stooge), Czech policy regarding Ukraine will separate away from Obama’s war against Putin, and will join instead with Putin’s defense against Obama’s Ukrainian assault. Zeman is thus now in very much the same position that Orban had been prior to Orban’s clear decision recently to side with Putin: each is a head-of-state of a former Soviet satellite nation, which had waged a democratic revolution (in 1956 in Hungary, and in 1968 in Czechoslovakia) against the Soviet communist tyranny. He is saying to his own countrymen, that the tyrant now is the United States, under its President Barack Obama, and is not Russia, under its President Vladimir Putin. That’s a seismic shift, away from the U.S., because of the Ukrainian coup. Zeman was careful in his selection of which Czech news-medium would hold this interview with him. As wikipedia has noted, Pravo “is the only Czech national daily that is not owned by a foreign company.” The message that this fact sends to Czechs is that Zeman wanted to make clear that foreign influences, and any currying of favor with aristocrats (who own the ‘news’ media) in foreign countries, will not dictate his policies; only the Czech Republic’s own democratic values, and the behavior of Poroshenko, will. Zeman is indirectly telling Obama: Back off from me — you’re trying to get too close, and I won’t tolerate this. When Victoria Nuland said “F—k the EU,” she expressed Obama’s view, and all of them recognized the fact; some, like Orban and Zeman, don’t like to be treated this way; others, such as Germany’s Angela Merkel, seem not to mind. It’s also interesting that the first two EU nations to indicate that they might leave the EU for an alliance with Russia are both former Soviet satellite countries that revolted against the Soviet dictatorship; both are Eastern European, not Western European. Perhaps these leaders are more loathe to be controlled by tyrants than are the ones for whom the very idea of being subordinate to a tyrant is just a mere abstraction. (Merkel, however, seems simply to love whatever is conservative, even if it might happen to be nazi, as in Ukraine.) In any case, Ukraine’s coup has already produced one earthquake of historical magnitude, in Hungary, with Orban, and might soon do the same in the Czech Republic, with Zeman (which will depend upon Poroshenko reducing his war against Ukraine’s former east — which, in turn, will depend upon what instructions Obama provides to Poroshenko). The European Union could actually be in the process of breaking up; and not only because of the Ukrainian civil war, but also because Obama’s forcing each and every one of the EU nations to choose up sides in Obama’s Ukrainian war against Putin will have very different economic effects upon the various individual EU member-nations, some of which will lose far more business with Russia, from adhering to Obama’s sanctions against Russia, than will others that go along with those sanctions. U.S. President Obama is thus now pressing his pedal to the metal in order to achieve maximum destructive force against Russia, regardless of how many or what nations will follow him — perhaps even over the cliff, into a nuclear war. Obama is, in effect, now saying to each and every European head-of-state: Either you’re with us, or you’re against us. He’s George W. Bush II, only with regard to Russia, instead of to Iraq. It’s “choosing up sides” time, yet again; and, this time, Obama and Putin are both waiting, no doubt each somewhat nervously, to see what his team will consist of, and what the opposing team will turn out to be. However, there can be no reasonable doubt that Obama was the aggressor here. A coup followed by an ethnic cleansing is nazi, not at all democratic. That’s not opinion; it’s fact; and so it warrants to be noted in a news report, even though (if not especially because) others don’t report this fact, so that it’s still news, for long after it should have been reported as being “news.” Unfortunately, it remains as news, even today. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Czech President Milos Zeman and JOHN J. MEARSHEIMER the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago TWO THOMAS GRAVES ZERO = Czech President Milos Zeman stated those who dont know the Ukrainian coup was of Western origin are uninformed. ==== > Please Mr. Graves raise your hand. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-30777844 This is the convicted rapist whom the Ukrainians threw out of office and into Russian exile last year, which action prompted Vlad Putin's clandestine and continuing invasion of eastern Ukraine and his annexation of the Crimean peninsula. --Tommy bumped

Thank you! --Tommy

Well, Paul, when thinking about the JFK assassination I'm a conspiracy theorist myself. But, unlike several members of this forum, I don't automatically blame the CIA for what took place in France recently, or what's taking place in eastern Ukraine, or ... --Tommy (Gaaal) Last weekend, Czech President Milos Zeman deplored the warmongering attitude of the Kiev regime, denouncing the CIA-installed Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk as “the prime minister of war.” mycatbirdseat JAN 7 [...] This is the ex-felon and embezzler Yanukovych, whom the Ukrainians threw out of office and into Russian exile last year after his snipers had killed several demonstrators in Maidan Square. Unfortunately this gave Vlad Putin an "excuse" for his clandestine and continuing invasion of eastern Ukraine and his annexation of the Crimean peninsula. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-30777844 --Tommy PS As regards your Milos Zeman, he's is a Czech Mafia-connected, brown-noser-of-Putin "joke". He joined the Communist Party in 1968, the same year that Russia and the Warsaw Pact countries invaded Czechoslovakia and put an end to the liberalizing "Prague Spring". Last November, while giving a speech on the 25th anniversary of Czech freedom from communistic rule, Zeman was pelted with eggs by his own countrymen and countrywomen who were angry about his communist past, his cozy relations with "Vlad" Putin, and his self-serving hypocrisy. Of course he's an apologist for Putin's actions in Ukraine. He knows which side of his bread gets the lard, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-30087621

Well, Paul, when thinking about the JFK assassination I'm a conspiracy theorist myself. But, unlike several members of this forum, I don't automatically blame the CIA for what took place in France recently, or what's taking place in eastern Ukraine, or ... --Tommy

Don't feel bad, Paul. I can't even bring myself to look at Fetzer. BTW, didn't you know that all of the evils in this world are attributable to the CIA and the Mossad? Everyone else is just a victimized, sorely-aggrieved, peace-loving individual. You know, like those nice Islamic boys in Paris who were brutally murdered by the fascist police there a couple of days ago? And that charming man Vlad Putin in Russia, just letting all those Russian soldiers fight in Ukraine on their vacations? LOL --Tommy

Paul, Don't you understand? The unpopular socialist (probably as in National Socialist ; yes, yes yes !!! That proves everything - that evil Nazi !!!) president of France, in collusion with the evil, evil, evil U.S. Government, manufactured the whole thing just to boost his popularity ratings! In the process he succeeded in smearing and getting killed some young, totally-innocent, peaceful, sorely-aggrieved (Islamic fundamentalist and Al-Qaeda - trained) individuals. LOL, Far From The Madding Crowd... --Tommy

Unfortunately it seems that the attitude of most of the posters on this thread is not "ask if it is false flag", but "assume it is false flag". --Tommy

Jon, et al., I agree with ya'll. There are no Islamic fundamentalist terrorists. Just peaceful, sorely-aggrieved individuals who unfortunately and unjustly get a bad "rep" through the evil, evil actions of the evil, evil United States Government in its never-ending evil, evil "false flag" operations. What a bunch of baloney. --Tommy

Jon, How does our believing that Oswald didn't shoot Kennedy obfuscate the reason Kennedy was killed? --Tommy

I believe [JFK] was killed for a practical reason and that the reason for his killing has been masked by those who believe "Oswald" didn't do it. Three questions about this sentence: 1 ) Why do you put Oswald's name in quotation marks? 2 ) What do you think the "practical reason" was? 3 ) Would it be better for us to believe that "Oswald" did it? --Tommy

I'm not sure about the exact date but I think the general consensus is that by 1972, military intelligence files on civilians had been destroyed. The specific answer regarding a date might be in: Negative Intelligence: The Army and the American Left by Roy Talbert Jr. (University Press of MS, 2008) This also gives some general idea about records-destruction practices which indicates that 1971-1972 was probably the likely period for destruction of files -- particularly for files on civilians not connected to the Defense Department. http://www.jfklancer.com/RobertJones.html 1. Dossier AB 652876, Oswald, Lee Harvey, was identifiedfor deletion from IRR (Intelligence Records and Reports) holdings on Julian date 73060 (1 March 1973) as stamped on the microfilmed dossier cover. It is not possible to determine the actual date when physical destruction was accomplished, but is credibly surmised that the destruction was accom- plished within a period not greater than 60 days following the identification for deletion. Evidence such as the type of dele- tion record available, the individual clerk involved in the identification, and the projects in progress at the time of dele- tion, all indicate the dossier deletion resulted from the imple- mentation of a Department of the Army, Adjutant General letter dated 1 June 1971, subject: Acquisition of Information Concerning Persons and Organizations not Affiliated with the Department of Defense (DOD) (Incl 1). Basically, the letter called for the elimination of files on non-DOD affiliated per- sons and organizations. Sounds like the only files the Army didn't destroy were the files of people who were currently "affiliated with the Department of Defense". Too bad it didn't keep the files of those who were formerly affiliated, like Oswald's for example. --Tommy

Jim, Were the passenger lists requested by the Warren Commission? --Tommy PS According to your theory, did Walker tell Oswald how to get into Russia quickly because Walker needed him to do something in Russia within a couple of days, or did he tell Oswald how to get into Russia easily (without Moscow's approval) for some inside-Russia project in the future? BTW, ... The CIA allegedly lost track of Oswald-look-alike and fellow false defector Robert E. Webster's whereabouts in Russia on September 10, 1959, just six days before Oswald, cutting short his documented plans to visit Cuba on his way to Europe, bought a ticket for passage on a freighter to Le Harve, France. While Oswald was in Helsinki the weekend of October 10, the CIA was led to believe (or said it was) that Webster was in a Moscow hospital for unexplained reasons. Webster eventually "resurfaced" in Moscow (and renounced his citizenship) on October 17, 1959, just one day after look-alike Oswald got there. http://www.maryferrell.org/wiki/index.php/State_Secret_Chapter1 But Webster wasn't in a Russian hospital while Oswald was in Helsinki. In actuality, as pointed out in the HSCA's Defector Study, Webster was told by the Russians on October 9 that he could become a Russian citizen, given a party by them on October 10, and flown to Leningrad on October 11 to apply for work at Leningrad Scientific Research Institute, Polymerized Plastics where he worked with his girlfriend (a suspected KGB agent) for the remainder of his stay in Russia. The study says that Webster then lived in a hotel in Leningrad for a month and "was staying" in Moscow on October 17 when he appeared at the US Embassy to renounce his citizenship. http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/hsca/reportvols/vol12/pdf/HSCA_Vol12_DefectorStudy.pdf For another, possibly "doctored"-to-look-even-more-like-Oswald (newspaper) photo of Webster, see: http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=48688&relPageId=60

Tidd's response: Larry Hancock, you write: "In Nagell's poessession, when taken into custody at the bank, was a Fair Play for Cuba newsletter, a Minolta [sic] camera and developing kit, a jacket from a Mexico City clothing store with 2 Mexican tourist cards hidden in the lining....one card had the name Joseph Kramer, the other Aleksei Hidel. He had two notebooks, one of which was later returned and one which was not. The one which was returned contained the unlisted number for the Cuban embassy in Mexico City with Sylvia Duran's name (same as in Oswald's notebook), a note from an FBI agent concerning names and meetings at unspecified locations, with dates. It also contained the names - which were later verified - of six CIA personnel, some on the West Coast and one or more in DC." How do you know any of this is true? Hancock's response to Tidd's question: "The materials taken into custody are verified in police and court records, as to the identification of the CIA personnel, the Agency was questioned on the point and actually acknowledged the individuals and employment in a memorandum ...as I recall, to the HSCA. These were not covert nor covered CIA personnel, they were office type people...I don't recall if their positions were specified. As to the citations and sources on all these things, you will find them in the books and documents....I would not pretend to recall individual citations, that's why I write books and publish research including document collections....certainly I don't trust my own memory on specifics. I should note that obviously Dick did the primary work on Nagell including contacts with his lawyers, the court archives, and even the police and jailers involved as well as former service persons, Nagell's family and friends. I've shared a few documents and records I located and obtained via FOIA but the vast bulk of the research has been his and at best I've contributed a minor amount...but that includes the possible identification of Nagell's CIA contact in Mexico City....who had also been stationed in Tokyo when both Nagell and Oswald were in Japan." I'm still waiting for Tidd's response to Hancock's response to Tidd's question, "How do you know any of this is true?" --Tommy

He appeared to possess a Minox camera, not a Minolta. --Tommy

In November of 2012, a "freelance writer" by the name of Jim Evans quoted then 96-year-old Colonel Hawkins as saying he blamed JFK for cancelling the air support at the BOP. The invasion failed as Hawkins and Esterline had predicted and was a major embarrassment for U.S. foreign policy. All of the invading troops were killed, wounded, or had surrendered within 72 hours. "Our president let us down,' laments Hawkins. 'He reduced our air support, and our bombers and ground troops didn't have a chance against the Cuban fighter planes. We had more than 1000 anti-Castro guerillas waiting in the foothills to join with us, but we couldn’t even make it past the beach. I still feel that we would have accomplished our mission with the proper air support." Kennedy ultimately admitted it was his fault that the operation had been a disaster but added, '"n a parliamentary government, I'd have to resign. But in this government I can't, so you (Bissell) and (CIA Director) Allen (Dulles) have to go." Both were subsequently forced to resign. http://www.examiner.com/article/colonel-jack-hawkins-quiet-american-unsung-marine Hopefully the anti-Kennedy "quote" wasn't from November, 2012, but was a much older one (pre Don Bohning's interactions with Hawkins) which in the article was made to look like it was from 2012. --Tommy

That Bissell sounds like a real weasel, Larry. --Tommy

You have got to be kidding me! It is truly a sad state of affairs when it is possible for a researcher or ANY interested party, like an investigative journalist, for instance, to obtain PROOF that the United States made no such promise in the first place, yet they instead open the article with embedded disinformation from the very first line. Some people would prefer to hold on to their hate even when it is ill founded. I am not speaking to Obama's policy here. I am speaking about the Bay of Pigs and the Agency's penchant for post-mortem character assassination. [...] Thanks Greg, This is what Larry Hancock says about it. http://www.larry-hancock.com/Bay%20of%20Pigs%20Revisited.htm This part is particularly interesting (sorry about the weird graphics): It took decades and the ongoing release of key documents before Esterline and Hawkins reached the conclusions they shared with Bohning. At the time of the invasion they simply had no idea of the situation, no suspicion that Bissell had gone his own way, made his own agreements, and in the end possibly bet the lives of the Brigade on a last ditch secret effort to kill Fidel Castro. They also didn't know that both Bissell and Air Force General Cabell had declined a last minute invitation from the President to present the case for more air support, another strike, to state flat out that without it the invasion was doomed. What Esterline found “most unacceptable about the whole thing was that even while the Brigade was going in, Kennedy offered Bissell and Cabell an opportunity to talk with him about additional air support – and “they elected not to." In fact, at that point Bissell did not even personally communicate with the task force officers, he sent General Cabell to deliver the bad news and greet the firestorm it generated. [x] --Tommy