Larry Hancock
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Posts posted by Larry Hancock
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Interviews of Soviet Division officers, at least two, show the same suspicions but of course they had no direct knowledge or documents. I see no way this will ever be resolved for everyone, its just too hard to give up the idea and too much has been written about it as if it were proven (including by me) - and there is a plenty of evidence that he appears in the files of numerous agencies and in different areas even within the CIA so he was an object of interest - as he should have been given his actions.
One of the more interesting things to me is how hard the State Dept tried to frustrate his return to the US, it pushed back against him for over a year and the files are full of objections and issues. He had a real battle getting back into the States, certainly nobody greased the rails there.
Of course the other question relates to chronology, if he was witting in going to the USR does that imply he was witting after his return, not necessarily. Oswald himself made am ambiguous remark during his return that he would never allow himself to be "used" again.
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The way its generally used the term applies to one officer running something directly and personally - outside the normal structure of the agency - which means they are themselves directly involved and using resources personally under their control. Yet it does not mean they have to be in direct contact with an asset, distance was always preferred (especially if it was truly vest pocket and unreported).
Making use of what Oswald was doing on his own, perhaps manipulating him without his direct knowledge, otherwise taking advantage of him as a "useful idiot" or tool, would be preferable in either a vest pocket or sanctioned/re-portable action. that is another view. And of course that means the rest of the Agency would respond to him with standard practices - which seems to be what we see, including the domestic contact in Fort Worth.
Personally I have come to follow Jonathan's view.
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He certainly could have, although it would be pretty sloppy work for Domestic Contacts not to get handed off for indirect collections from someone like Oswald. Another interesting point is if that was done indirectly in Fort Worth, its a pretty good sign Oswald was not a voluntary asset. We know from other research that defectors like Webster were approached on their own and directly debriefed in some detail.
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Thanks for the kind words Robert - and Gerry certainly the transition would have taken a considerable period of time, after all there were turf wars involved and who reports to whom and has how many staff is always a major factor (for a lighter note, the funniest version of that sort of thing I ever came across is in a SF book titled "When they came from space", it guts government bureaucracy in side splitting fashion).
I suspect what was really going on was to give DDP some domestic reach it had not had before, especially in the area of covers, business, professional and personal for overseas covert ops. They wanted to do that themselves. Ditto for covert air support - which was becoming critical in SE Asia.
And not that I would ever suspect CIA org charts, but they may have left contacts under DDI for a reason - Domestic Contacts had legitimate offices in major cities, offices even listed in the telephone directory. When DDO guys needed a place to work in New Orleans there was no station, so hang your hat in the contacts office. Which would indeed be a type of cover for Domestic Operations (trust me, I'm just here if you have something to report).
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I'd like to thanks everyone on this thread - from Robert starting it through all the exchanges to David's eventually coming up with a document that is truly revealing as to the evolution of CIA Domestic operations - it makes me wish I could magically edit my books retroactively in real time and add or correct things, but at least I can still blog on Domestic Operations. And I think it really opens a window to the fact that a lot more historical research should be done on Domestic Operations in the sixties than has been done in the past:
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Hi Paul, actually the most intrusive incidents were in the mid 60s at the first round of ICBM squadrons, and then in the mid-70s where all the MIRVed Minuteman III's were placed. SAC had its turn earlier with UAPs "stalking" SAC atomic bombers on ready airborne alert over Canada and before that it was intrustions at the first atomic weapons stockpie sites. Been going on for a long time...graphs on all that are in the pattern study link I posted.
The problem is we have little to no data from the the late 70s on, it was never consolidated and if it still exists its in archives at the NMCC, NORAD and a few other locations including regional command headquarters for the Navy. At least as hard to dig that out as to get CIA documents.
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Paul, its really challenging to tackle your question without our having a lot of context in common - such as the long history of UAP monitoring of our atomic weapons, intrusions at atomic weapons storage sites and with atomic bombers and missiles, actual interference with weapons systems related to both and more. This has noting to do with abductions, Roswell, gray aliens, lizard men, crashed saucers or anything of that ilk (or even Dark Skies the TV show which was built around JFK, RFK and Roswell)...its strictly related to national security. Read my book or study one of our papers (for free) and we can talk about it...somewhere else than here I would imagine.
https://www.amazon.com/Unidentified-National-Intelligence-Problem-UFOs/dp/069289229X
Pat, yes Harry Reid pushed though funding for a study and essentially forced it on an agency that really did not want it, which in turned sandbagged it into what ended up being a series of largely un-UFO related studies including paranormal elements related to Skinwalker Ranch (yes, that TV show) and was effectively a boondoggle without addressing the fundamental security problem - which no military agency has ever really wanted to fact as they are unable to deal with it...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/16/us/politics/pentagon-program-ufo-harry-reid.html
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Jim, as far as my thoughts go - obviously I think UFOs are a serious national security issue, if not I would not have written a book with that title. And they are a very contemporary issue. We all know that public opinion and the attention to Stone's movie played a major role in generating the ARRB and although the folks in this forum may not be aware of it there is something very similar going on now in DC, with whistle blowers, several Congresspersons and a huge public interest in the subject of UFOs. So to me its no surprise to see Schumer move on it - several others in Congress are already using it for political capital so that sort of thing does not shock me.
As to the success of such a bill, it would take something of the scope and budgeting of the ARRB to shake out any of the documents I want - which are almost all from the last four decades and would reside at NORAD, the NMCC, and with several very specialized service intelligence groups. Since there was never any investigation of UFOs like the WC, the Church Committee, the HSCA etc you have to go get them from the sources and all of those places will offer a classification and access challenge. So do I want a UFO ARRB, yes but only if the legislation recognizes those issues. Otherwise its a waste of time and money - much like is going on with the DOD project in progress now - which was forced on it by Congress.
On our concern here, my current belief is that progress on the JFK assassination lies in new collections including forcing out films and photos and other material held privately, not just in document release and that that could only be accomplished by NARA accepting its role and restarting the aggressive collections as the ARRB did...which means reaching out to us and asking for guidance. So I would take an extended ARRB or a directive to NARA to step up and fulfill its obligation as successor to the first one.
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Ron, it is - first put it up on Mary Ferrell in 2008 - hard to believe it was that long ago. One of the major features is that Debra Conway's sister Sherry Fiester worked from LAPD maps and diagrams I provided her and did some awesome graphics to illustrate the Ambassador hotel and the movement of the suspects in and around it the night of the assassination - something LAPD never did but which greatly enhances the picture of other suspects in and around Sirhan - actually following him to the pantry to intercept RFK (where he had been reported days early at an RFK rally).
https://www.maryferrell.org/pages/Essay_-_Incomplete_Justice_-_At_the_Ambassador_Hotel.html
I think it fully exposes the conspiracy and LAPD's failure and of course it should really be read in conjunction with John Hunt's masterful study of the crime scene and related evidence - which deconstructs the premise of a single shooter:
https://www.amazon.com/Buried-Plain-Site-Search-Murder-ebook/dp/B0BR5WWY3Y
I think you will find Incomplete Justice (edited and with document links provided by Rex Bradford) an interesting read. Larry
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Ron, I'm very much aware of Pena and Hernandez having worked for AID and have my separate problems with both of them - wrote about them at length in my essay Incomplete Justice on the RFK assassination. What we do know is that AID had as one of its sanctioned tasks the training of foreign police departments and they did use police as consultants so that finding police officers that worked for AID at times is not in itself especially anomalous. Despite several people looking at both of their backgrounds there is no sign that the two were actually CIA employees somehow put under AID cover and then sent into LAPD.
We probably would never even know about them if it were not for the RFK assassination.
Interestingly they and SUS actively pursued a conspiracy in the RFK assassination for several weeks, months even. It was only after they totally failed to crack it and the PDG became a major embarrassment that they appear to have caved to political pressure and turned back to destroy their own investigation by blatantly and knowingly destroying Serrano as a witness and then using that to destroy the credibility of a dozen different witnesses who supported her story. I related that all in my essay and it is totally provable that they knew what they were doing and there is evidence in the LAPD files that demonstrates that - they even ignored letters from an assistant LA District Attorney which totally repudiate their slandering of Serrano.
Yet up to that time SUS was playing it straight and seriously pursuing leads. While it all leads us to question Pena and Hernandez's ethics, it seems to me to point towards political pressure from the Mayor and the LA DA rather than anything covert - in fact it is so blatant and so obvious in the LAPD's own records its hard to think of it as covert.
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David it sounds like if they executed this plan they moved Domestic Contacts and their officers from DDI to DDP and integrated it into a Domestic Operations unit which included activities such as commercial covers as well as bringing in Air Proprietaries/Operations which had been a stand alone unit (and which Bissell had refused to use for the Cuba Project). Do I read that correctly? Of course Barnes would have been a perfect fit to run such a unit given his experience with proprietaries and covers for that if he had become head of a new, integrated Domestic Operations unit.
If that is true Moore might indeed have been reporting up to a unit headed by Barnes but given what was going on in Laos and elsewhere overseas Barnes would have had a lot of really challenging missions on his plate in support of covers for covert operations.
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State Department and AID covers were probably the most common for mid-level CIA officers while the lower level operations personnel and those from other sections generally used commercial covers. Morales used State Dept covers earlier in his career as did Phillips.
It was assumed CIA personnel would be placed under diplomatic cover at embassies and consulates, same for KGB.
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Bard states where it is obtaining its records and identified a public source - but then says it cannot find them in that public source. So it knows they exist and is excerpting information from them but then cannot locate them to support its information. It does not say it can locate them but they are classified and cannot be accessed.
Given that the numbers it gives do not correspond to those known to be related to that source suggests its not a matter of release but rather a matter of such documents being real.
Of course someone may have given the AI the ability to tease..?
To be blunt, creating a mystery out of this as if there were some major source of searchable records that the AI can find and nobody else has - including NARA itself - deserves some confirmation before we jump into one more sensational mystery among those we already face. I'd suggest you contact NARA on Monday and get their opinion.
Otherwise somebody might want to notify the FBI that a huge national security problem has emerged and the AI is compromising who knows what secret and unreleased files...surely someone should be concerned?
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See my note on the document number problem...the AI is not even getting number formats right and these are not legitimate document numbers at all...which is probably why its generating documents and then not finding them.
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It appears that the AI is getting its number formatting wrong, all of these are missing a digit in the last character set so something pretty fundamental is wrong in how the AI is searching for - and finding records. I'd be hesitant to accept anything its providing at this point...
https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/rif-numbers
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It gets complex when people are allowed to stay in their service as a cover....Morales held an Army cover for a long while....ditto State, ditto USAID as compared to when they are simply "detailed" to the CIA as Lansdale was so his promotions and pay came from the Air Force. The simple answer is who was cutting their check at a given point in time i.e. who was their legal federal employer. You would have to find who signed off on their promotions, their pay, their retirement... but the reality would always be who was giving them their day to day tasking. Vietnam was especially difficult in that since the Ambassador was nominally in charge, same for Laos.
Lots of military in SE Asia were detailed to the CIA for orders and tasking while still paid by their service, that was especially true for pilots early in Vietnam and in Laos or Cambodia later.
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The first answer is easy, Chief of Station/CIA was John Richardson during 62/63, nominally he would have reported to the Hemisphere Director for the CIA whose name escapes me at the moment, who then reported to the CIA Director John McCone and as usual the Deputy Directory acting for the Director.
Of course Conein had become known to all the military players in Vietnam while working for Lansdale as the initial CIA station chief, Conein being assigned first to covert operations in the North and then to campaigns against the insurgency in the South - he had a lengthy personal history with the Generals.
As head of Joints Chiefs Special Affairs Staff, Prouty was tasked with supporting "covert" CIA military operations i.e. operations were American military equipment (primarily aircraft, boats, supplies) were to be used in deniable operations. Basically coordinating getting the asset from the military unit that owned it into the operation and making sure it got written off in proper deniable fashion. That would have applied to action in Laos but by 63 Vietnam was much more overtly American military, even for US ground forces and so were the supplies going there.
As far as loyalties, I'd say it was more a matter of Conein being former military, a combat vet and ideologically a devout anti-Communist - anti-Communism was the driving ideology of the time and it certainly was for Conein. It was an existential war against the Communists wherever he was serving, and of course most CIA officers were out of WWII service as well and shared the same attitude. Beyond that everybody competed with each other as they always do for resources, recognition and position, military vs. state dept, state department against CIA, army vs. navy, air force vs navy. If you doubt that just look at how they talked about each other in their own internal communications - which is why I've pointed out that the best place to find out what the CIA was doing many times is in the FRUS State Dept records, not in CIA documents.
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I wrote about this in SWHT and unfortunately don't recall the details but there was an inquiry into the missing medical material and I came across an internal document essentially saying it had actually been pursued but matters were so sensitive in regard to RFK and the Kennedy family that it was thought best to drop the subject and not pursue it further....it was sort of a notification that the subject was being dropped and everybody should just walk away from it.
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In fall 1963 Conein was still working for the Chief of Station, CIA in Saigon but taking orders and acting in regard to the Diem brothers and the coup from State Department officials.
https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=931#relPageId=668&search=lucian_conein
https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=945#relPageId=461&search=lucian_conein
As is often the case State Department documents give you a more accurate picture of the reality at a given point in time than CIA documents do...
Following the coup and assassination of Diem he was called back to DC to be interview about all those events in Saigon. We spent a good bit of time on his papers a few years ago and found a lot of correspondence of his communications with the Generals and his rather desperate aircraft to be used to fly the Diem brothers out of the country (nothing that said they had agreed). He was unable to obtain an aircraft for that purpose as they were all tied up and scheduled in military and supply operations and he held no special priority - apparently he was making that effort on his own, not directed out of DC.
I could not find any document to show exact dates of his travel to and from Saigon and I'm not familiar with any of the documents reflected in this thread - in a quick check of MFF I found nothing even similar. I hesitate to spend too much time on it since it appears that virtually everything coming from this source needs to be labeled with a warning.
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Paul, if you look at the routing slips and copy lists you find that sharing information between the CIA and many other agencies including the services and various military groups was simply routine practice / SOP....that's why they call it the intelligence community and talk abut national intelligence. Nothing especially mysterious, its the day job.
As an example the MIG's were tasked with monitoring travel to and from Cuba as well as both pro and anti Castro activities and they reported on that to other agencies and in turn were copied by other agencies. A 112th officer in NO picked up a leaflet from Oswald's first outing, made a report, it got into a file and the FBI and others were copied. In turn the FBi returned the favor and an Oswald file resulted at the 112th HQ....which is why on Nov. 22 when an officer heard the name Oswald he could pull a file on it, find the name Hidell (from the FBI) and advise DPD of that. We have all that correspondence on the record, no mystery.
Nobody apparently reads the intelligence community books I post on - yes they are expensive - to see how things are set up to work - so you can look for exceptions which would be suspect. Painting with such a broad brush in terms of Army intelligence (with many levels under many commands) or the JCS (with many staffs but no direct command authority) here is really as bad as just talking about the Mafia, which used to the the suspect community of choice.
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I've wrestled with the LeMay issue for so long - even chaired a panel on it at one Lancer conference - that all I am comfortable with saying is that he was on vacation, then hunting in the Canadian woods, actually had a fairly long hike to get to a small Canadian airfield (not airport) where he could be picked up by a plane dispatched by his aide. We don't have specific information on that flight other than the remarks from the aide and the tower log that turned up later. Certainly there is no sign that he landed at Andrews at time close to the arrival of the aircraft from Dallas and considering that arrangements were still being made while AF1 was in the air it makes sense that his arrival was a good bit later - not even sure he was picked up on a jet as the Canadian airfield was more like a local field.
But there is no evidence to indicate he did not land at Andrews since that is where the special aircraft unit that operates those planes and does communications with them is housed.
https://aerocorner.com/blog/who-pilots-air-force-one-how-to-become-a-presidential-pilot/
How soon and if he got to Bethesda is a whole separate and entirely anecdotal story....as far as I know nobody ever actually interviewed the Bethesda command staff about the arrival of any flag rank officers or even as to their observation of the autopsy, which would have been interesting given that the admiral in charge outranked and overruled the request of the President's Doctor to not conduct a full autopsy but rather only recover bullets and fragments as evidence. Livingston, not much read these days, is one of the best sources on that sort of detail.
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Ben you have me stumped on that? I recall the exchanges between and aide to LeMay and AF1, he is communicating to AF1 in regard to LeMay.
But LeMay's aid was not on AF1, he was in DC and routed through the comm center that handled communications with the special unit charged with White House and other official aircraft - that center was in communications with AF1 as well as the delegation that was outbound to Japan over the Pacific.
Could you give me a link or reference to the conversation between the aid and LeMay that you referenced; I do recall them being in contact through Single Side Band radio but I do not remember a tape or transcript of that exchange).
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If anything is liable to make an AI stumble its probably the JFK assassination ....
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LeMay was in Canada on a hunting trip, after having earlier been on vacation in the Midwest. This has been discussed and deconstructed so many times that the fact that its still in doubt at this time, that people writing books are getting it that wrong and that anyone would rely on Google for an answer is really depressing. Of course it does demonstrate that its possible to make a mystery out of anything I suppose and that actual answers never "stick" as well as the mysteries.
As to the AF1 tape, having studied it and knowing something of AF communications I can support Doug is saying there is missing voice and possibly data traffic. I also have researched and presented on the control and actual release of the tape, and the transcript used by Manchester. However the voice traffic that is on the record is reliable and support's Doug on LeMay's location - for that matter we know the aircraft he used to get back to DC and the Canadian air field it flew out of that day.
https://larryhancock.wordpress.com/2011/12/31/air-force-one-tape-and-general-lemay/
If somebody shows me the telegram I will back off and restudy...until then the factual answer is, LeMay was hunting in Canada.
JFK Lancer 2023 Conference
in JFK Assassination Debate
Posted
There will be special rates and they should be available soon - the first contract the hotel sent to Gabriella was fine except they had the special rates on the wrong day so she has to get another version to sign; once that is complete the rates will be available. I will post as soon as I get word.
One note on more speakers, John Newman and Alan Dale will be participating but John has some travel issues so the presentation will be taped and presented during the conference.