Larry Hancock

Pat, sorry to go off topic but could you check your email for a note from me or drop me a line so i can get back to you.....the forum is not allowing PM's to you.. thanks, Larry

Thanks to A.J. Weberman the full color version of the diary is available. Those who have not seen it will find it interesting; certainly the extent to which Oswald wrote in Russian is

interesting as well.

http://issuu.com/ajweberman/docs/1adressbookcolor/1

Kantor's book is a good factual study of Ruby and his environment, my concern with too many assassination conspiracy books though is that they take you off on the author's

preferred track and without a good baseline its easy to get carried away with a particular premise, especially if it fits a world view you already hold. Get a firm

grip on the reality of the data first. Reach your own view on what sources are credible or questionable before you dive into an authors take on them...

I would certainly agree with you on Meager's book as well as David's; I think in terms of timing they might be follow on simply since they are each deep studies. But both do also help set a baseline

in understanding the evolution of the research. The next step from there would probably be Fonzi's book as it gives great insight into issues with the operation of the HSCA and also provides

a reality check on how one can get diverted once you get drawn into the world of the Cuban exiles.

I know that lots of new folks have joined the forum to monitor or participate in the discussions. Given that there may not be a lot of "old timers" around, I would offer the following as homework that should be done in preparing to evaluate what you read here. You will have to search for some of it, much is available on line, other through JFK book sellers such as Andy W. and much shows up on the book tables at the annual Lancer conference.

1. Penn Jones book series and his newsletter collection

2. Jerry Rose's Fourth and Fifth Decade newsletters - on line at the Mary Ferrell Foundation

3. The Assassination Chronicles - some still available from JFK Lancer

........those will give you a solid idea of how JFK research developed and evolved over the years

4. The Mary Ferrell Foundation materials and documents, if you have not mastered all the content there and become experienced with searching its

resources you really should do that...

5. The NARA online search tool....while not up to date it at least gives you a start and getting the bigger picture of available documents

6. The JFK Lancer archives - on line and Rex Bradford's History Matters web site

..................

As far as books go:

Ian Griggs No Case to Answer gives you considerable insight into the DPD and issues with its initial investigation

William Law's book on the FBI agents at the Bethesda autopsy is critical for factual information

Jerry McKnight's book on the Warren Commission is critical to understanding its sources of information and what it did and did not do

Trask's Pictures of the Pain and his follow on book present the history and origins of many of the photos and films - start there before you

delve into alteration and manipulation

Those are the basics, I know others will list their own favorites and I have others as well but before you really start to go "all conspiracy"

and get too deeply into the debates, point counterpoint, and theories, the small list above will help provide context and balance. I honestly

don't recommend reading conspiracy books (including mine) without that sort of baseline.

-- Larry

Robert, I have personally viewed a large number of first day affidavits and statements and have both paper and CD copies, at this point in time I'm not willing to state from memory that I have seen all the names you list. Have you contacted folks in Dallas in your search, the DPD, the city archivist, the library research group, or the Sixth Floor museum? Have you worked at the archives in DC, contacted their staff or used their search tool? Honestly if you wish to believe that none of the officers or other first day witnesses were interviewed in the first days or weeks or gave statements for the record, I'm not going to try and persuade you otherwise and I will leave it at that.

Most definitely all their initial statements were recorded and have been available for ages. You will find the extensive DPD files and their history at:

The Portal of Texas History:

http://texashistory.unt.edu/explore/collections/jfkdp/

The DPD documents that were given to the federal investigation are also available at NARA and you can search there. As I said, they have also been

available in paper and CD but you would have to do some digging to obtain those now as they were privately published. Copies are almost always

available in the book room at the Lancer conferences.

I think that is the way its commonly/officially presented and if you read their first day affidavits and interviews that plays pretty well. If you read their later WC interviews with all the

details of the shots from above, hearing hulls hit over their heads and dust coming down from the ceiling its hard to avoid the impression that they realized they were hearing

one or more shooters firing from directly above them. If that was their focus then you have to suspend a bit of disbelief and go with the thought they were not concerned about

shooters directly above them trying to escape or getting into a fire fight with police but that they were running west to continue to watch the motorcade or to look over to the

knoll area...knowing that the shooting had been from right where they were.

So yep, you get your choice.....could be either one. However its the rather dramatic disconnect between their first day remarks and their later day details that is more interesting

to me.

Robert there are extensive DPD reports available, they are archived in Dallas but over the years they have been distributed in bound booklets and on CD and in other forms by researchers. Several

researchers have written extensively about them and also interviewed and published on the officers themselves. I'm just not clear on why you would think all the first day affidavits and interviews are missing?

There are way too many inconsistencies in the first day remarks of the guys on the fifth floor and all the details of the shooting they added days later when it

became clear what the official story was going to be..... I also seem to recall some remarks about running over to the west windows to better see what was going on...

which is hard to understand if you totally know the shooting was from right above you, best thing to do then would not be to gawk but to duck and cover since

a fire fight is pretty likely to be the next order of business as law enforcement charges the sixth floor with drawn weapons....

Cliff, I too doubt that Oswald had any direct contact with what I call the tactical or shooter team or for that matter with those who incited/organized actual conspiracy which ended up in Dallas.

And a good patsy is isolated from the conspiracy per se, the last thing those with good trade-craft would want is a linkage....think of all those white boards on the mystery shows, the bad guys

get caught when a detective team connects the dots. Of course in this case there as no true detective team in hot pursuit but nobody with experience would count on that.

Cliff, I don't think Oswald had anything to do with these international events per se other than ultimately beginning a target of opportunity - first for various intelligence groups and ultimately, in October 63, for the folks organizing the attack in Dallas. At this point in time I have seen files on so many individuals who were observed, monitored and reported on for real or potential contacts with foreign operatives that I don't see that much totally unique about Oswald up to fall, 1963. Then, because it was clear he would end up in Dallas during the Texas Trip he became a viable patsy for Dallas. I will also be perfectly up front and say that Oswald himself understood the general context of the situation when he said he was being arrested simply because he worked in the TSBD and had been to Russia and was an obvious suspect (yeah, I know he didn't say all that actually but he did say part of it and I have to tell you that anybody with the slightest "commie" leanings would have been target number one in Dallas after the attack - which explains the focus on Molina as well). What he didn't know is the elements of the frame (some of which did make it into play and some of which did not) which was more specifically set up to tie him to the shooting.....which may explain why he was more "casual" about things at the beginning than seems reasonable. He very possibly had no idea there was physical evidence in place to link him to the shooting, real or not.

Now having said that, I better be a bit more clear. I think Oswald was related specifically to the Dallas plot because he was known to the exile network which operated from Miami through New Orleans to Dallas and that network was very sensitive to anybody who was a Castro supporter - which Oswald appeared to be in NO. I have also seen numerous internal CI reports where individuals - usually exiles - were reported inside the CIA and to the FBI as being Castro agents or being used by Castro agents. In the fall of 63 agent Heitman in Dallas was conducting an intensive investigation of an exile who had been fingered in Miami as a possible double agent. What I'm trying to say is that people like Oswald were identified and targeted by exile counter intelligence, both the official group at JM/WAVE and by various exile groups themselves. It is literally insane to think that the DRE folks in NO did not generate info on Oswald - which is why we are never going to see those Joinedes (sp) documents. So, Oswald became "known" and visible, ultimately to people who needed to lay some groundwork to point to Castro in Dallas. And given how the exiles in particular gossiped, you can darn well bet that people they trusted and who had trained them, ultimately heard at least the general details of the conspiracy and probably a few names as well....all of which leads you back to Quintero and Jenkins that I mentioned in a post an earlier post. And of course when Underhill heard about the assassination, he immediately thought of the clique down in Miami that had earlier ties to SE Asia, to contemporary covert arms dealings and to covert Cuban operations - he was bright enough to know that JFK and RFK were very unsatisfied as to how those things were going, he may well have heard that RFK had his own people snooping around Miami trying to find out if the CIA was really doing what they were supposed to or if there were things going on which did not support administration plans and directions (which was certainly true). Put two and two together and you have Underhill feeling that some of the folks he had come across might well have been involved in the Kennedy assassiantion and that they knew he had been nosing around and that he was at risk. Whether or not he really was is questionable but its perfectly clear why he had legitimate reasons to be afraid.

-- OK, next time please ask me a closed end rather than open end question so I don't go off like this again... Larry

Sorry, that was all over the place but

Thanks Cliff, I think its safe to say we truly do know a great deal more about the details of events in SE Asia now, much of it based on material only available since 2000. As with most other history we can now flesh out things we thought we knew, diminish or toss other ideas that were based on less information and it all once again proves it just takes considerable time for real history to emerge from the chaos of events - and of course all the contemporary efforts to obfuscate and perform CYA.

In that respect I just finished reading a great article on Rolling Thunder and how it began and was micromanaged. In particular how Johnson and his incompetent SecDefense marginalized it and the total disconnect between war fighting and what covert negotiation attempts that Johnson was trying to pull off. Its a terrible indictment of Johnson's micromanagement of the air campaign - if the families of the airman involved had known what he was really doing they should have gone after him with pitchforks. We now have actual details of the mission planning that are so appalling that it would make any Vietnam era vet want to start beating their head against the wall.

Helliwell certainly comes into the picture in what I would call phase I of the Golden Triangle story. He and Willis Bird played a key role into getting the

CIA linked into Thailand back in 1950, Helliwell's story then evolved though the Sea Supply logistics cover but that later fell apart in Thailand as Sea Supply got kicked out due to its drug dealings. The second phase,

of the Golden Triangle story moves on up the trial into Laos, as the Nationalist Chinese forces were pushed that direction. Then it began to involve the CIA personnel in Laos and that's where Hecksher comes into the story.

One of the reasons why we know so much more about the details of all this is some brilliant historical research done on the ROC forces in the region, published in The Secret Army, by Richard Gibson.

Also, in regard to rules of engagement in Laos, while its true that the US Ambassador officially bore the final say, we now know that when Shackley moved in as COS in Laos, he began to have a major

impact and actually changed the rules of engagement all up and down the trail, dramatically changing tactics and essentially initiating some of the worst tactical decisions anybody could imagine. Before that

the American military advisers had been recommending the tactics and they had been far more effective; however the officer in charge of that got moved over to Vietnam during the transition to CIA control of

the surrogate Laotian forces.

Cliff, as I recall that Fort Detrick unit is discussed by Hank Alberelli and I discuss it in NEXUS as well. Basically the CIA technical services division subcontracted with the Army chemical weapons labs to develop a suite of particular chemical "tools" ranging in use from interrogation to simple incompacation to lethal poisons. A number of them were were intended for use by Staff D and by the security division. Alberelli does a great job of detailing the group and the CIA's relationship to it, interestingly enough the senior officers who would have known about the tools included the head of security, CI and Staff D....which means Angleton and Harvey. Virtually all the work was done without records and on an oral only basis but some materials did surface both under the Church committee and I think the Clinton Administration which investigated questionable military testing of both chemicals and radiation in the fifties and sixties.

If you want to go into military support for CIA logistics and operations, I cover the groups that did that and their evolution in Shadow Warfare. While it did begin while Prouty was around it morphed considerably in the 60's after he had left.

Interestingly you can take that a bit further and I do so in Shadow Warfare. It seems that Underhill had specifically been interested in and investigating two areas before the assassination. One of his primary interests was tracking legal but covert arms purchases and shipments. During the fall of 1963 there was not a big spike in covert purchases going to Vietnam because we were sending in American weapons. However, there were some serious buys and leasing of both weapons and related materials such as boats and even aircraft going though a new set of deniable CIA covers.....all under the AM/WORLD project which was being run by Hecksher and Jenkins and which was getting logistics support from a totally compartmentalized logistics group and JMWAVE. A second major Underhill interest was reportedly the continued presence of Soviet missiles in Cuba - given Underhill's long time connections to LIFE magazine you have to wonder what he might have heard about the TILT operation. In any event, his interest in either matter might have made him visible to people like Hecksher and Jenkins and in turn the exiles they were working with - in particular Hecksher apparently had been engaged in some very interesting and covert activities with the Golden Triangle groups following his reassignment from being CIA COS in Laos. His probable Golden Triangle connections are also explored in Shadow Warfare. All this is certainly circumstantial but would be corroborated by Gene Wheaton's information about Quintero, who was heading exile operations and logistics under Artime as part of AM/WORLD.

Well of course you can Mark, there's a well remembered expression from the 60's...."if you remember Woodstock, it just proves you weren't really there".

Actually Mark, that sort of reminds me...what do the DPD and WC interviews with Julia Postal look like, did nobody think to ask her how many tickets she had sold or

how many folks had gone into the theatre?

Mark, reportedly DPD officers did prepare a list of patrons in the theater that afternoon but as far as I know no sign of that list ever turned up in DPD documents...which means we don't

have a concrete number to deal with....of course it would have been pretty standard practice to make a list of those in the theater so it seems strange for it not to be on record.

"For the moment I have suspended their rights. Hopefully this matter can be resolved and membership returned."

James, I'm just curious about what they have to do to resolve the matter and reinstate full rights? Maintaining them is clear under the usage terms but the suspension "process" less so...

Don, I certainly agree that point / counterpoint has to be civil. And I know that's also difficult given topics that are important to people - I've often said that I wish key boards could be built with a timing delay so that you are forced to really think about what you just typed before it is actually sent. On numerous occasions I cancel messages or posts before they get sent. And I have no desire to visit venues which are confrontational, cliquish or just plain nasty - which is why this forum and one or two Facebook threads are the only place I go.

But I'm also a content fanatic and much prefer research and factual posts even if they are at odds over just plain dialog and discussion which sometimes seems to go on forever....or feel like it. Basically in supporting Tommy I was just making one more plea to keep an open a forum as possible with as much factual give and take as possible. That may or may not be possible but I would certainly prefer a forum that is factually oriented rather than one that sounds like the current American Congress....ooops, sorry, just a little attitude coming through there...

I would like to second Tommy's proposal and to point out that both Greg and Lee are extremely knowledgeable of the subject areas they post on so its a shame to see the current conflicts. Good peer review requires factual confrontations and that is one of the functions an online forum can really contribute....obviously it has to be civil but if there is no factual give an take then its not worth the time. Anybody who reads professional journals knows

that peer review can get bloody at times...their editors make an effort to keep personality out of it but by its nature in involves disagreement. I'm concerned that far to much conspiracy information gets waved

around without challenge because it appeals to individual world views. The key is to keep it on a "just the facts" level. Obviously there will never be enough facts to resolve many of the issues but

the great majority of folks who visit the forum deserve facts even if they appear to be conflicting.

I'll go with normal...hardly ever get that chance so might as well grab it...

What Gary said Lee, good to see you back.... Larry

Very good Ian, that's it....perhaps anyone who has a copy might take a quick scan and make sure Hill is discussed as I recalled just as another check....