Larry Hancock

Thomas, two points to consider... First, if Nagell is accepted as a source, Oswald was already quite aware that the fellows he had been in contact with in New Orleans were not true Castro agents but rather exiles pretending to be from Castro...the same view comes independently from Martino. Unfortunately while we have good reason to think Oswald was in contact with exiles in Dallas, possibly as a dangle to exile gun buys, we have no idea of exactly what story lines had been fed to him from whom in those last days before Nov. 22. If Martino is accepted Oswald had still been in touch with at least one of the guys from New Orleans - or someone representing him who could verify that, but he may have been talking to other exiles as well...ones not masquerading. That why I expressed my view that Oswald was planning on leaving work and meeting with someone at the theatre, but any guess as to exactly what' they had told him and what he expected to do is just that...a guess, on my part at least. Second, on your Mexico City question, a big part of the answer lies in where the taping of the impersonation call was done. The CIA had local taps on consulate phones, but they also had a much broader tap on both the Cuban facilities and the Soviet embassy as well as other locations based on using equipment at an actual telephone switching center. There are lots of questions about the tapes made there and who had access to them, its possible both the FBI and Mexican intel was getting some copies. The local taps from the consulate fed into CIA safe houses, where local teams (trained by AMOTS from JMWAVE) ran recorders. The interesting thing is that a tap like that can run both ways, you can monitor lines being picked up or you can pick up the line yourself given the nature of the tap....you would only do that on a weekend of course to ensure nobody picks up the line and hears you on it...that would sort of blow the whole game. Bill has this much fresher in his mind so he would be better to comment....we worked the tap/tape issue at length given my prior telephone switching background. I don't believe we were able to actually determine where the call was taped, locally or at the telco switch. However, since both the Russians and Cubans were being taped, the tape could have been recorded either off the Russian line or the Cuban line....don't know that we could tell but Bill should comment.

Well said Pat, this is an incident of bullying, and harassment...it has nothing to do with free speech or academic freedom. That gets to be clear if you really investigate it. It also shows how teachers, particularly in social studies, are increasingly being placed at risk by students with agendas - or by those with agendas who are prepared to influence them. .

Mark, again I am pulling these sorts of memories out of decades old articles in the Third and Fourth Decade publications...bits and pieces here and there. I think its safe to say that Oswald had learned to drive at least at some level, that he was interested in getting his license and probably at some point in the distant future when he could afford it his own car. We forget that he was a pretty normal young man with a growing family and an interest in getting back together with his wife and family, even concerned about his daughters shoes while in jail. Lots of things may have been going in with and around him but it would be more than odd not to see him interested in driving, he was a pretty independent fellow and in Texas that would mean a car. As to the test, of course the problem would be getting a car, perhaps Ruth would have let him borrow one to take the test for Marina's sake. It seems to me that I recall something from Ruth herself about his wanting to use her car for a test but that's way to back in the mists of my memory to be reliable. I think there was an article devoted to his interest in a car and in the car insurance and it was mentioned there...again most likely in either the Jerry Rose's articles or in Penn Jone's publications....the best lead I could offer.

No big news on the drivers license interest, we know he had been taking lessons, he had even planned to take the test and missed it for a reason I don't recall off hand. There is an interview with an insurance agent from the neighborhood of his apartment describing him coming in asking about insurance. Its been a long time since this came up but its pretty clear he had learned how to drive and was anticipating getting a car.

Well while Gary and I most often disagree, but we do trade messages and I could ask him for a contact. I'm not sure that with his position it might not be someone else making the call...,.but you never know. If you were willing to do it after their normal hours.... If its a simple matter of making measurements and or photographing a recreation perhaps they would. After all you are going to have to pick a time when traffic allows it. Might be easier to get into the Dal Tex, I don't know what's on that floor these days, I've been in a few times but that was normally on the weekend and all the offices were closed. If you really get into it you might want to be in touch with Jerry Dealey, he is extremely familiar with the TSBD and the buildings in the Plaza. I do remember that someone actually did laser measurements on angles from the DalTex a few years ago so they were able to get into the building after hours. Don't recall who but someone here might...

Robert, its been a while since I was there but at that time it was only the so called "snipers" window that was blocked off on the Sixth floor. You could still stand one set of windows to the right of that....

"Two things that have always troubled me about Sylvia Duran's testimony is that she claimed Oswald was short, about 5' 5", and that he was dressed "cheaply." The real Oswald was about four inches taller than her and was wearing a nice vest sweater and tie in the passport photos he had just had taken of him about an hour earlier! Scroll down on this link to see his Cuban Visa application photograph: http://history-matte...Mysteries_1.htm" Tommy, unless I am mistaken, there was an intense search to locate where that photo was taken - with no luck at all. Now it makes sense that Oswald might have dressed well for the visit, but Duran would have handled his application with the photo so either her memory is very poor or there is a big disconnect. Again, given that clothes are always an important part of a description I'm curious as to why nobody ever seems to have shown that passport photo to Duran or Azcue or anyone else and asked for a verification. Why rely on physical descriptions alone when you have a photo of the guy they supposedly saw ...and in multiple visits. For that matter, did anyone ever show the photo to the Russians for a verification?

It seems to me that the most heated and passionate arguments seem to center on questions of evidence and what can or cannot be trusted. That leads to unending disagreement about the Zapruder film, all the other films, the medical evidence/reports from both Dallas and Bethesda, the specifics of wounds and the overall question idea of body alteration. The next level includes other items of evidence, rifle/rifles, the bullets, a variety of issues pertaining to the limo, Oswald's possessions and questions about Oswalds whereabouts and movements before and after the shooting. To a large extent the decades of CT argument have focused on point/counterpoint over evidence and witness issues that would have come up in a court of law, in front of a jury...but never did. Of course we also argue over conspiracy scenarios and suspects but that doesn't seem to get quite as heated....generally....

Well yes, I know that when authors start getting notes about either errors or asked for clarifications and citations the first thing you do is think addenda and start asking the publisher about posting addenda or putting errata sheets in the book. Also, these days with print on demand, you can usually fix such things quickly and the publisher simply hands off an update for electronic printing...easy to make corrections even in between editions. Its a lot easier than it used to be to make fixes these days. Well generally it is - for print at least. When it comes to Amazon and Kindle it can be much more challenging.....

Well it should be easy for her to rectify it then. She must still have her original which had all the sources cited, should be quick enough to pull them out. Actually in that event she could just ask Kris to issue an addenda sheet with them or to put it on her book web site.

I'm a little confused on this, is Judyth saying that in numerous places she did have end notes showing herself as the source of information and Trine Day deleted those? Or is it that she has other sources to support things that she was making personal remarks about and Trine Day left those off?

Thanks David, that pretty well resolves any existing question of access....what we would want to see is far out in time, looks like I'll have to leave that to someone else. Good to see the wording in the legal agreement though, it is pretty definitive in terms of Manchester having his hands tied by the law suit. No wonder if was reportedly so bitter about it.

Tom, indeed Manchester himself has refused to release his actual notes as far as I know...and many have prompted him for them. My understanding is that he had a bit of a falling out with Jackie, its totally rumor and gossip but I think was putting in more negatives about Johnson than she wanted at that point in time....or another interpretation is that it simply had to much about Johnson in it, meaning too much personal focus on him rather than JFK and his friends and staff. My impression is he stonewalled her on that point and the book retained information rather than having it taken out. It may well be that he agreed to hold the notes and interviews due to some pretty negative comments he was getting from Kennedy staff about Johnson. My understanding is that the notes and transcripts are his personal property, he is the only one that could make the decision on release and has chosen not to do so, as far as I know simply on the grounds that they are personal property, not historical documents. Someone else may know if he gave a more detailed explanation or announced any plans to turn them over to some archive. Now having said that, as far as I can tell Manchester was an absolute fanatic about sources, he went to the mat with Johnson on the AF1 tapes and finally got at least an edited version. Johnson was so afraid of Manchester and the book that he assigned one of his staff to try and spy on Manchester and find out what was going to be in it. I/we have found a couple of places where it seems that he was not told the full story but those relate to national security issues, for example he was told there was no secure voice communications available on AF1 and that is pretty unlikely. Certainly there as a secure teletype and at least one source who was doing communications with the plane that day and who does not want to be named suggested to me that it was totally unreasonable to think there was not secure voice as well. Actually the technical aspects of the communication on the plane seem to be one of the most closely kept secrets. I've come to believe that part of that, especially at the time, was standard security practice but another part was that Johnson was so unprepared, inept and....well anyway....that some folks may have been trying to cover up for his total failure to live up to his duty as CIC. A simple answer to your question is that there may well be areas where Manchester was not given the full or true story of events in Dallas, but as far as the national security, command and control and related areas that are the focus of Surprise Attack, I found his information to be quite accurate. In my book I do highlight some areas where I think certain he was given a cleaner, or better sounding story after the fact than what really happened that day. Nothing really unusual there, I found the same thing in regard to more than a dozen other national security crises that I evaluate in the book, some of them much more egregious. -- hope that answers your question, if I went off on a tangent and missed something just let me know.. Larry

Thanks Evan, I did dig pretty deeply into the work of the real specialists such as Bruce Blair as well as the actual practitioners including Admiral Miller. It was hugely educational for me and I think a lot of folks will find surprises in it. As it turns out there we often huge practical disconnects between the military side and the civilian, national command authority. Looking at the whole body of work, over several decades really made that stand out. The book will be going into edit the end of next month and hopefully will be available by September.

Its interesting that you went there Pat, actually a lot of the story I pursue has to do with the actual communications available on AF1 and how each of several President handled it over time during crisis. But that just has to do with AF1 over time. As far as the two aircraft in question in Dallas, technically each plane was supposed to be a duplicate. In fact only who was riding on the plane translated into whether it was AF1 or "AF2". Both were Special Air Mission planes and in a pinch or with some major equipment problem, either could have been used by the President. The communications systems had to be the same on each aircraft, etc. However what we do not know is if Johnson's plane was as fully staffed with communications specialists and operators as was the Presidents. The difference may have been in terms of people, not equipment. But of course that is something Johnson would have had no idea of....in fact its pretty clear that Johnson was totally unaware of even the basic communications ability on the aircraft. As far as AF2, the only thing Johnson really knew about it seems to be his fondness for its pilot Jim Cross. Its a tangent, but if someone really wants to know more about Johnson and the transition, I heartily recommend a book by Bill Gulley, Breaking Cover, it will tell you things even Manchester never got a clue about. But to answer your question, the story pushed about a security reason for his taking the aircraft - and the thought that Johnson even had a clue about such things - is simply bogus.

Yep, I think that would be Deep Politics....as for me, I have a hard enough time just tracking the folks who are officially supposed to have the bullets, and not even the magic ones.

Free speech is a right...but it also has consequences. If you say something incorrect or cannot corroborate factual claims then someone else has the right and duty to point it out. And if you keep doing it, it needs to be made very visible. Now I know this does not happen with a lot of today's radio talk show hosts and TV personalities, but still, it should be done even if their readers and supporters refuse to listen - for whatever reason. Not to be too serious but to make a point, their used to be a saying here on the frontier ....."speak your mind, but have a fast horse". Listeners were assumed to be skeptics, not fans.

Martin, we do have a report out of Fort Bliss that a tank division was actually activated and ordered to move by train to Dallas. That order was cancelled about ten pm that evening. Other than that, there is no reported assembly or movement of ground forces other than their simply being alerted and put in an enhanced defense condition. Strike Command in Florida was notified by the 112th....somewhat strangely....but Strike Command was not an operational group with standing forces. It would have had to be directed to put together an operation and that order would have had to come from DC, no sign of that. Larry Haapenaen and I actually tracked down all the units that would have been under Strike Command if for example some order against Cuba had been issued. We found no sign of any of them being mobilized. I will say that a number of us have looked for exactly that since we started with the same suspicions, we just were never able to find any signs of it. The only place where I have found that some Army troops may have actually been mobilized was in Germany, near the border. That was pretty much SOP for any event that might suggest a Soviet push was imminent.

Ron, I'm not sure to what extent McNamara's memory was blurred by the time he did his book, he seems to have forgotten a number of things about his career. For starters I would recommend as basic homework reading Manchester's research on this since he interviewed all the principals in regard to their movements and actions starting within months of the event. I can tell you that the NMCC learned of the shooting off the AP wire, as the Situation Room did. The NMCC staff then alerted the Chiefs who in turn sent out a worldwide alert, they did not raise DefCon at that time. And they then continued with their meeting with German officers. As far as I can tell they did not inform McNamara as they should have nor did the NMCC, he learned it separately, left his meeting, and ultimately took the Chiefs to the NMCC, where a Defcon upgrade was issued. The timing and wording of the alert and Defcon message is a matter of record. While that was happening NORAD and the unified forces commanders were polling their assets for any suspicion of Soviet movement and none was found. That is in extant messages as well. Now I'm not going to represent the actions of SecDef or the JCS as appropriate; for one thing standard doctrine of the time called for decapitation and they should have actually responded to the threat immediately and moved the SecDef to the NEACP aircraft... About the only thing they did do is that Taylor alerted Army forces in the DC area...he did not say why and nobody asked him. What none of them did was try to establish contact with AF1 or ensure the location of the bomb bag and Johnson, Taylor told Manchester he thought about it...but didn't do anything. As to similar behavior, all I'm going to say is that in Surprise Attack I evaluate the overall national security command and control response during every attack from 1941 to Benghazi - compare and critique them. Among a great many other things. That was a whole lot of work and I'll leave that for the book. Let's just say that generally speaking, when the emergencies happened national command authority almost always never worked as planned. You don't have to go all the way to 9/11 to find that, take a look at the horror story of the Reagan shooting...

Robert, first off anyone really has to do some serious homework to understand the nuclear release command and control process and the reporting that would go with it. Plus those rules applied not just to the SAC chrome dome airborne aircraft and strip alert aircraft but the tactical aircraft in Europe and the Pacific. As well as the Navy's Polaris subs and the Air Forces missile sites. Any individual unit not having the capability to receive and respond to the nuclear release orders had standing orders to report same to its command and its command to the NMCC at the Pentagon. So its not just Air Force but the Navy's CIC's had the same authority. Actually CINCPAC did order preparation of shipboard nuclear weapons and tactical aircraft in Europe were moved to strip alert with nukes on board. Beyond that, there are news stories of the ICBM crews actually moving up to launch alert, as SAC was authorized to do on its own. I could give you a list of books and documents that cover this...and I do so in my upcoming book, but I'm not going to replicate that here. I don't know what individual crew member John talked to, I have talked to both Navy and Air Force missile crews as well as read accounts by SAC pilots myself. And no, I was not referring to Johnson at all, that is a separate story that I've covered before in great detail and do in the upcoming book. Regardless of Johnson, both the President and McNamara had national command authority for nuclear weapons release, with the orders having to be issued through the Joint Chiefs. Even with Johnson out of touch, McNamara was responsible for that. Beyond that, and something not widely known outside the nuclear command and control professional literature, there were a set of senior commanders who held the authority to release and engage with nuclear weapons in the event of an attack on their forces or the nation. Pre-delegation was put in place under Eisenhower and JFK (and successive president's) continued it. -- I've given Martin's answer the best I can in a forum context, I'll just leave it at that. Larry

I've written and presented on this extensively, you might find threads here with a search. The presentations are available on CD at JFK Lancer. Bottom line is that there was a worldwide alert but Defcon levels were only raised one step, about two hours after the assassination. Some commands, having the authority to do so, did take additional measures but that was in the Pacific and Germany. The information about the code books is incorrect. The Secretary of Defense and Joint Chiefs were at the Pentagon and in the National Military Command Center, for some time at least. The Sec Def had full national command authority including access to all the required codes to issue any nuclear options as necessary. The full story of the military response is contained in a new book I have going into publication this August, the working title is Surprise Attack.

Tommy, I'm afraid I would have to leave the marked card discussion to Bill, not current enough on the subject to be accurate myself. However, it is quite suspicious that a "witness" gave a description gave a description that did not include the most common thing mentioned in witness descriptions of suspects - clothing. To me that suggests a degree of distance in the whole thing, someone had enough physical information to give a file type physical description (accurate or not) but were not even close enough to Oswald to have established what he was wearing on Nov. 22. As you say, the source of that profile is interesting and might reveal who had access to that specific description in which files. But to me it also suggests that those on the ground had limited contact with Oswald at best and had not even seen him that day.....which if you think about it is interesting, on the order of "well we are going to kill the President to day and we have a patsy but I wonder what's happening with him today, sure hope he made it to work."

Well said David, and a very good question indeed....

My remark was in regard to 16 shots by 8 shooters - in regard to Hank's question. As to American financial connections to Germany, the German financial and industrial complex and the Nazi regime, that is well documented history that has been written about by reputable historians for many years..

Nope, totally off the rails....