Larry Hancock

Paul, I think this is simply more complex. CI would have its own interest in Oswald, its very possible an operational element of the Agency - perhaps anti-Castro operations under SAS or even one of the field offices might have their own agenda with him. Beyond that, the FBI subversive desk might well have a more operational use for him, while the FBI field offices would be monitoring him as a potential security risk. On top of that CIA domestic branch would have its own interest in him. While some of these groups might share certain information at certain points, others would hold everything compartmentalized. I've personally seen instances where different CIA groups knowingly and with full authorization witheld information even from internal investigations and claimed every right to do so based on their own security criteria. Jon may have a different view but my point would be that once again its wrong to talk or think about either the CIA or the intelligence community in general in broad terms.

Paul, actually its pretty easy, either the Sforza family routinely used that name in public documents, birth certificates, etc from the birth of their father through their own births - or they didn't. It should be a matter of public record. I also fail to understand why you think they would lie about such a public matter? Of course with a little work you can track them down and ask them yourself. They obviously are not covert if they attended the Bethesda conference and talked to individuals there....

Paul, its my understanding from folks who were at Bethesda and talked with at least one member of the Sforza family that that James is correct and that Sforza was a true family name, throughout their and their parents lives. Since I have not spoken to them personally I will leave it at that. I don't know if Newman has spoken to them personally or not.

Jon, that's a very important point and one we generally don't take into account....CI watches and CI tracks.....it doesn't run agents.

Jon may have a better answer but I can tell you that on Nov 22, they certainly did and even referenced the use of the Hidell name from their own Oswald file - which contained copies of FBI reports as well as newspaper reports from New Orleans. That also included their own field agent's report from NO with a report on the Navy ship leafleting. I have a good number of 112th documents, including those although more may be available now.

The other thing we have to keep in mind is that deep stuff is always heavily compartmentalized and everybody does their day job. It would have been only reasonable for CIA domestic ops to us a willing source such as DeMorhrenschildt to monitor Oswald's return - and he was advised well before the couple arrived. That would be irrespective of any deeper games already in play or other activities that might develop later. The same is true for the FBI, the regular field offices would treat Oswald like a person of interest based on his public activities while the subversive division might have their own compartmentalized effort with or around him. And source/informant files could well be held separately. When Hosty told the Secret Service agent that Oswald had been monitored in subversive contacts only weeks before, that is apparently something he was told verbally....not something in the standard office file. -- we have to remember that such procedures were SOP, designed for layers of security both internal and external, not just to frustrate us......which of course is not much consolation

That's a great question Jon, especially since I've actually looked at a good deal of the 112th info on Oswald. At least based on the parts we can see, they really began tracking him based on reports circulated from New Orleans since that was in their geographic area of responsibility. Actually it was one of their agents who first picked up an Oswald leaflet from his picketing in the area of a Navy ship. However the reports they were primarily receiving were FBI reports related to his FPCC activities including some interesting speculation on whether or not there really was a NO FPCC group and whether or not Hidell was a real person or another name being used by Oswald. It appears that the 112th was relying on the FBI to investigate Oswald and that their view, based in the file, was that he was suspect as a Castro sympathizer and organizer. However I recall no reports being filed on him after his return to Dallas. The CIA was sharing info about his appearance in Mexico but I would need to check to see how that was being circulated; I don't think it got back to the 112th. However if it had, they should have put him under watch since the MIG units were being tasked with monitoring anybody trying to come and go to Cuba. The interesting thing is how much they would have seen of his full background - like the DeMohrenschildt info - even if they had requested it from the FBI. If the FBI was really handling him as a subversive subject - which Hosty intimated in his Saturday remarks - they they would probably have gotten noting. But to really answer your question, if I was 112th and knew about the relationship, I would not suspect Oswald was an agent or even a source, I would assume his was person of interest and an intel target. A little inquiry on DeMohrenschildt would tell me that he was a cooperative individual, providing info to the intel community and at best I would guess the CIA or FBI had already lined him up to report on Oswald.

Jon, I read the same thing, it still does not give me enough detail including that student's prior activities in class, any exchanges on previous topics etc. The way you have stated it is factual and neat but my experience in the classroom is that things are not necessarily that clear cut. For that matter I'd need to know more about how the class itself was structured and the teaching techniques in use. I'm simply saying I would need more detail to make a judgement myself and until I had it I would not be blogging about it, especially at my own institution....I might lodge a faculty protest or do a variety of other measures for starters if it really concerned me but I wouldn't incite matters without doing some homework and pursuing other options....such as asking the instructor personally how it had all come down. It may be that the instructor was quite wrong and the student quite right....having been an obnoxious student in my own time however I'm not going to assume that.

I don't know how many of you have taught or tried to lead adults in classroom learning. Personally I'd have to know a lot more about the original incident to have an opinion at all and I suspect McAdams didn't know either. Freedom of speech is one thing but I can tell you for sure that one opinionated and aggressive student can totally destroy an entire class if the insturctor allows things to spin out of control - been there, screwed that up (on both sides). I may be old school but I'd like to have a lot more facts before determining if the instructor was suppressing free speech or just trying to handle a difficult classroom situation.

This is really not that much of a mystery, we know that DeMohrenschildt was asked by a local CIA domestic officer to watch for the Oswald's families return, to monitor his reentry and to collect information on him. He did so and passed it back to the CIA officer, just as he had routinely shared information before. That part is all from his own testimony. Beyond that its pretty clear the he helped pay to get Oswald started on his manuscript, which was in essence a complete debrief of his Russian experience, obtained a copy of it and most likely shared that as well. Whether or not the manuscript would have been used for propaganda purposes - since it was assertively anti-Soviet and anti CPUSA - remains a question as it appears that Oswald was moved off into other "dangle" type activities at that point, primarily targeting the FPCC. All in all an excellent example of the subtle and professional way domestic intelligence operated - and likely still does.

Paul, I have talked with Bill and others who have spoken with at least one and possibly more of Sforza's children and they seem to be firm that it was a true family name, one they grew up with and used throughout their lives. I've got contact info for one of them and have had an introduction but honestly its just not on my priorities at the moment. I can confirm that three of the alias's/psuedos that John discussed in his presentation are in my 2010 edition of SWHT where I discuss them....I located them independently through separate document research. As to the Angleton connection, that can get very confusing. For example Morales was definitely PP staff within Operations, however at times his path appears to cross Angleton. In NEXUS I write about Angleton's various involvement in Cuban affairs, beginning with his stepping into an intelligence role following the BOP and preparing a major Cuban intel report that went to high levels in Washington. He clearly used resources at JMWAVE including the AMMOTs Morales had trained. Who they were reporting to at the time is unclear but it was probably Morales himself. Angleton had the authority to step across a lot of normal boundaries but I think its safe to say that no PP staff functionally reported to him and that generally in his headquarters role he did not touch operations. One exception was his work with Harvey on ZR/RIFLE and Mongoose but that was something way out of normal practice. As to Joanides and PP staff at JM WAVE, I would assume he was head of the propaganda and psych war activities there and PP staff would have worked for and around him....but there were other PP staff working for Morales and Shackley .... I think there is every reason to feel Joanides woudl have been in touch with Phillips. Honestly off the top of my head though, I don't know if Joinides would have been directly reporting to Shackley as JM/WAVE COS or to Fitzgerald as head of the Cuban SAS project. Simpich could probably tells us that easily enough, I'm afraid my interests are off in other areas these days, along with most of my gray cells. To comment on another question - I can't locate all my Nagell files readily so I cannot name his exact organization in Japan but I can say for sure that he was assigned to the Counter Intelligence Corps there and as part of that assignment had taking training at the CIC school at Fort Holobird (sp). For reference not the Wiki background on CIC below and the fact that Japan and Germany were primary assignments for CIC officers following WWII http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counterintelligence_Corps_%28United_States_Army%29

Paul, Shackley was Chief of Station and Morales headed base operations - which included responsibility for everything from training to infiltration and ex-filtration missions. In November both Morales and Sforza (according to his family a true family name not an alias) were involved and in contact with David Phillips on a project to exfiltrate Castro's sister via Mexico. Sforsa had functioned as her primary contact while he was still in Cuba. Simpich and I have both written extensively about Phillips activities in the fall of 63 as well as the supportive relationship between JMWAVE and Mexico. There was even a sub station of JMWAVE in Mexico, personnel including Morales often traveled to Mexico and the AMOTS did training for the MC surveillance and wire tap teams. Given Bill's immense recent work with JMWAVE documents all of this is much less mysterious than it used to be and the close association between JMWAVE operations and covert operations in Mexico is now well documented. Angleton was head of CI/SIG and in NEXUS I go into great detail about his competition for CI work with both JMWAVE, SAS/CI and Mexico City Station. Bill goes even further in such detail in State Secrets. Its very likely that Angleton was still in contact with Dulles in 63 but his primary headquarters contacts were via his personal relationship with both Helms and Harvey.

Just to be clear, in one of these posts I mentioned the PP directorate....to be more accurate that was actually a personnel reference and should have been stated as "PP staff". The PP job classifications worked under the Directorate of Operations. which reported to the Executive Director / CIA, to the Deputy and then finally the Director. Of course actual field activities were conducted regionally under direction of the senior officers such as JC King in Western Hemisphere and then under the actual stations such as the country stations, special stations such as JM/WAVE or special projects such as PBSUCCESS, JMARC, Mongose, SAS or AMWORLD.

Being the pain in the rear I normally am I'd say I would need more specifics (maybe I will paw through those files after all, its just cold out there) but I would be comfortable with saying Nagell being an Army military intelligence detachment. Without the records I can't say which one and the only one in Japan I could find (see link below) was formed well after he left Japan and after the occupation was formally over. http://www.misawa.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123413210 The way I see it he was assigned to field intel in Korea after coming off the line in active combat and later moved into an intel detachment in Japan. If I get up the nerve and can find the files I'll see if I can be more specific about Japan. If anybody has my CD "Keys to the Conspiracy" it has a bunch of Nagell files on it and the info might be in there as well. I know it must be in his personnel files though. Also, if you have Dick's newest update of his book, he writes about the new files from Japan and might be more specific about his assignment in there.

Chuck, you need to specify a time frame...but in the fall of 1963, Phillips had recently been assigned to report to Desmond Fitzgerald, who had himself just taken over the anti-Castro Cuban mission that year as head of the newly organized SAS group. Prior to that he had reported to the Mexico City CIA chief of station following the end of the JMARC Cuba project after the Bay of Pigs. Those assignments were all way down the chain of command from headquarters, certainly he never reported to Dulles and it would be years after 1963 until he moved up the structure to a senior position. At the time Dulles left the CIA Phillips was still working in individual projects within the PP Directorate which included propaganda, psychological and paramilitary operations.

Yes Tommy, I'm very aware of what Dick wrote and was when I began to run across it in the ARRB interviews and later elsewhere. Of course those things are situational, for example a field intelligence unit operating in an allied country might be doing things that were not shared with the host nation, making it exceptionally secret at a given point in time. Given what Nagell describes of military intelligence operations in Korea and Japan after the truce that would certainly seem to be likely for those two nations at that time. That could also explain the latter comment, especially if the Col was aware of activities that were quite illegal and involved murder of both foreign agents and even of treasonous American personnel...as Nagell also implied. Those involved in such activities would not be playing games and most definitely would not want to talk about such activities. In later times and decades, when talking abstractly about the function of field intelligence its another story. Certainly the fellows interviewed by the ARRB considered there assignments as rather routine and simply one facet of their overall careers in Army intelligence. As to Nagell's files, they are stored in the garage, buried in files and honestly I don't plan to dig into them at this point. Its clear he was assigned to an intelligence detachment and he himself described his activities in fairly great detail, what I recall from the files - including a series of complaints and protests relating to security issues with his marrying a Japanese citizen - was very much in line with what he had told Dick. Dick has the same set of files, many he shared with me and others I shared with him. Once I get my next book in print I really need to get all this stuff, the Crisman and Beckham files, the Plumlee material and a lot of other documents into MFF or to Baylor where folks can do their own research.

Tommy, to my understanding Field Operations Intelligence was not quite all that "super secret", it was literally field or "front line" intelligence, conducted by personnel assigned to combat or overseas units and focused on prisoners, captured equipment, interrogations etc or counter intelligence if it was a front line unit faced with potential combat. Which was one of Nagell's assignments in Korea. Actually when the ARRB interviewed personnel from the 112th Military Intelligence Group, they noted several who had previously served in FOI groups during overseas assignments, including in post war occupied Germany. And as to the latter, all major commands overseas had one or more military intelligence detachments assigned to them; you can find a list of several such groups with some google searching. I suspect Jon Tidd might be more accurate in describing the formal designations than I would be - according to the organization charts there seem to be Military Intelligence Groups, Divisions, Detachments etc. As far as Nagell is concerned I'd have to look up some of his actual personnel documents to find out the formal designation of his unit. Of course all these designations can and do change over time.

Just off the top of my head, Nagell worked for a time in a Army field intelligence while stationed in Korea but when he was stationed in Japan he was assigned to a military intelligence detachment, which would have been a sub organization of one of the Army occupation groups. I've got a lot of his documents from Japan and so does Dick Russell, it probably indicates which specific unit it would have been. Those detachments did a lot of counter intelligence among other duties. The document you posted looks like a spin off of the Oswald visit info the CIA communicated after Mexico City; as to the Wilcott thing, that another one of those teasers that might mean something if we just has a little more detail. I'm pretty sure Oswald got some spending money for his bar "dangles" (nice work if you can get it) in Japan, who knows if that came from the ONI and then they decided to apply for some CIA funds, etc. Its possible Wilcott could have seen that, especially as it seems that the Navy did a pretty good job of sanitizing the full record pertaining to Oswald, especially in regard to his Japanese tour.

David, I looked at the document you linked and that Oswald Project is pretty clearly a post assassination research project...at least it seems that way to me at first glance. Do you have any pre assassination documents referencing an Oswald project? Second, could you clarify what MID organization you mean, the Army Intel MID organization was disbanded in 1903 but various units especially in the Far East had military intelligence detachments, were you referring to one of them? -- thanks, Larry

I hope somebody can find that document....I spent a long time looking for it and found nothing but dead ends. Until I see it I'm taking it as a myth...

Granting that legal process, the question of why the the photos and X rays do not clearly show where the wounds were remains...as well as the issue of the Doctors inability to identify them on the photos and X-rays. You can blame the latter on memory I suppose, but I would still expect to see the photos and X-rays support your assessment of the wounds. Do you feel they clearly do that?

Pat, it seems to me a reasonable question is why we still have this controversy? Why don't the official autopsy photos and X Rays clearly show where the wounds were and what was a point of entry and what was a point of exit. Even if I follow your argument for admissibility in court, the defense attorney likely would still have required the Doctors substantiate their statements by referring to those autopsy materials and if the Doctors responded on the stand as they did to questioning by the ARRB it would have been pretty ugly.

Pat, my understanding was that autopsy protocol, particularly for cases in which criminal prosecution would be pending, required specifically marking, identifying and making sure that the photos, X rays etc offered no doubt as to the wounds in question. None of that was done at Bethesda, indeed when asked to identify the wounds in the photos and X rays by the ARRB the Doctors could not do so. Which means if called into court there would have been real problems for the prosecution. A little help here, do I misunderstand this issue? Also, the exchange you describe still does not appear to address the alternative trajectories recorded in the photos John found....why would that have been done if Fisher was simply validating the official scenario of the President's wounds...?

Pat, that certainly seems reasonable for "placing" the work ....I guess my next question would be what the Doctor looked at to make him even consider the very strange high angle and upward low angle body paths? What wounds or other data would even bring those up as options to be studied? Clearly not my area but did he leave any detailed studies or notes about why he was totally satisfied with the official versions against Wecht's protests...that would at least indicate an objective study. The other thing that keeps coming back to me is why none of the medical professionals who examined the official evidence even commented on the lack of any professional marking of the entry and exit wounds or the other sorts of protocols which I understand to be SOP during any autopsy, much less the autopsy of a murder. Did that not bother any of them, even a little?

Carmine, the full and accurate text of that Marine Corps information can be found on: http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=36&relPageId=306 I think you will find the full quotation of interest, including the fact that the call signs and other tactical identification information are routinely changed, for standard security purposes. So, certain of what she is quoting is correct although it needs to be taken in full context.