Larry Hancock

OK, I took this question to my buddy Bill Simpich who remembers everything I ever knew and have now forgotten. He jogged my memory about a story from several years ago that Gus Hall had received a letter from Oswald, decided not to respond to it because it was most likely from an agent trying to penetrate the group and just put it in a file. After the assassination the name Oswald got his attention, he found it and it scared him to death and he never told anybody about it. And certainly did not respond. Which is exactly the story you will find at the following link on the letter: http://www.newsday.com/long-island/nassau/lee-harvey-oswald-letter-to-communist-gus-hall-to-be-sold-1.6286346 So it seems likely the letter is the real deal, which raises the question of exactly what Oswald had in mind in writing it. But it also raises some questions about where exactly the other letters that Oswald wrote to the CPUSA ended up including the ones the FBI held, what Hall thought about them etc. Why were they not in the same file, etc.

Stephen, Oswald was on the HT/LINGUAL intercept program but apart from that the FBI was monitoring mail to the CPUSA and FPCC, several of the letters we have from Oswald were picked up from those sources...both mail openings and assets inside the organizations (which the FBI always often portrayed as mail intercepts or black bag jobs to cover having folks inside). I strongly suspect they were monitoring Oswald's PO boxes as well, in fact I discuss a document in SWHT which indicates they were also covering mail to his relatives and noted when they moved. This letter is extremely important, is there any chance you could follow up on the offer to verify provenience with those selling it? If this is real and the FBI held it back for some reason it would be pretty significant. And even if its real and they missed it, it is as well since it conflicts so dramatically with Oswald's remarks about CPUSA in his manuscript.

Good question Douglas, but not totally inconsistent with Oswald's correspondence I don't think and the PO address is certainly spot on. As I mention in the blog post there certainly verified letters of his to the CPUSA, retrieved by the FBI including a strong one asking him about going underground. That itself should have made major headlines whether this is a hoax or not. The pattern and paper trail of his correspondence with the CPUSA, SWP and FPCC is quite clear and was very much minimized. In any event, this letter and its provenience certainly deserves some research by our community and I hope it can be resolved one way or the other. It seems of considerable importance and I was surprised to see it just fall off with no comment.

I'm not sure why Stephen did not get more response to this post. I find it fascinating and want to know a lot more about where the letter was found and how it surfaced. I also think its very relevant to assessing Oswald's relationship with the FBI. So, I've added a post on it in my blog, part of the Connecting the Dots series....this one is "A Communist Conspiracy?" -- Larry

Bill, not to be picky but Wiarton was not a SAC base, not even sure that it was a Canadian Air Force installation. Its a commercial airport with a 5,000 foot concrete runway. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiarton_Airport As I recall it was the closest field to him that the small jet could get into...although for all that we really don't know exactly where he was hunting...or what sort of transportation he had for that matter. Its probably also reasonable to note that he was in a staff position, not a command position as he had been when head of SAC, which means he might not have been quite as much "on call" has he had once been when he had to be in instant contact at all times with SAC. At that time he probably had a better comm network than the President, truthfully SAC was the only unit that truly function as if it were on a wartime basis. Which for that matter was realistic, the Command and Control book I'm reading points out that Soviet doctrine of the period was that preemption was their operating strategy since they knew in any exchange the US had a truly overwhelming military status by 1962. ...if I have the wrong airport somebody please chime in... Larry

Ken, as I recall he was fishing in Canada or right along the border and actually flew out of a field in Canada. There have been some good articles on this including one with photos of the small airfield. You should be able to find it with some searching....its sort of new here right now but as Bill knows we have visited the story several times before...

Bill, I'd like to know more about Speckled Trout but if it was a SAC airborne emergency command and control aircraft, which I suspect it was, then it would likely have been a four engine jet with a bunch of electronics equipment and multiple personnel. SAC kept a network of aircraft airborne for global communications in the era before satellite comm and along with the airborne alert bombers, there were comm aircraft in the air all the time. I'm also thinking such an aircraft might be borrowed for official travel but likely not for a fishing trip and in this case LeMay had first gone on vacation to visit relatives in the Chicago area and then on into Canada for fishing. I think the point would be that those big four engine aircraft were staged out of a limited number of fields (that's in the paper I did on all this) and may well have not been able to fly into that small Canadian field that LeMay came out of to go to DC, it was the closest field of any sort to where he was fishing. And of course a small courier class jet is going to come and go and a lot faster as well,

Thanks Chris, it certainly gets very complex and I explore the subject in great detail in Shadow Warfare, intelligence personnel frequently used both State and AID covers and the country CIA station was essentially "buried" within the embassy or consular staff in most instances. That makes things confusing enough since sometimes the CIA station also operated with "detached" personnel - as they did in Mexico City - who certainly could not be seen with or around the normal officers. In was difficult enough to manage that remotely but things got even more complex when there were actual "operations" being supported by people in country who had to be totally compartmentalized from the county CIA staff. In Mexico City only the station chief and David Phillips were authorized to know about the AMWORLD operation and its safe houses, which had to be totally insulated from both the normal station staff and even its outside assets. One of the things I was referring to in my previous post was the linkage between JMWAVE and Mexico City, we do have limited indications of it, in some case JMWAVE was supporting station operations - for example an AMOT was sent down to train some of the external wire tap and surveillance personnel isolated from the station. In other instances there seem to be communications strictly between JMWAVE personnel in Mexico City and Miami, with no sign that the local station knew what they were doing - which makes sense if they were engaged in something like exfiltarion or infiltrations from Cuba. The one thing you could almost always count on was that the country ambassador was never fully briefed on what was going on, but then it was important for his denials to be "sincere"...grin.

Well done Pat, I was going to go into the Weisberg material but you did a far better job than I would have. This incident reflects the problems with taking the material offered by the FBI to the WC strictly at face value, testimony offered into the record often did not quite contain all elements of the story.

Paul, I've done some detailed posts on this that you should find in my blog and elsewhere. LeMay was in Canada, on vacation, out of touch. His aide and probably others were trying to get to him a number of methods. They were also trying to organize a flight back for him, to get in touch with that flight etc. With his position on the Joint Chiefs they wanted constant contact with him and no doubt LeMay wanted it as well. As head of SAC he had routinely carried a SSB radio with him at all times to remain in constant touch via the SAC world wide network. But then he had been flying in "his" own aircraft. I'm pretty sure any aide to LeMay would be busting his rear to be in communications and arrange communications for his boss on Nov. 22, not being proactive would definitely be a career limiting move.

It was at the Pentagon Bill, I happen to be reading a series of books at the moment, dealing with strategic command and control and one particular book - The Command and Control of Nuclear Forces - discusses that the National Military Command System had been established at the Pentagon in June, 1962. It was the control "portal" though which national command authority ie. the President or SecDef interacted with the consolidated warning systems and the control links for weapons release. I'm learning a good deal more about the details of the command and control system and a great deal about the tactical military alerting systems. It would have been those systems that the Chiefs and McNamara were monitoring for real time attack indicators more than anything coming in from the CIA. It should be noted that in 62 an NSA feed was also put in there and at the White House, that had not existed before and was more a matter of telephone calls from staff duty officers, things were really becoming much more electronic during 62. -- anyway, if I come across more relevant details I'll share them, lots of reading and learning to do on this, Larry

We do know of some steps the Pentagon was taking, they were jumping the defcon level a stage and alerting various commands. CINCPAC even jumped the alert higher in his region. Also SAC was raising the interm alert levels at its missile sites. There are several states within each of the defense conditions that can be handled independently. I also have to caution that LeMay's aide contacting him and calling him back would have been pretty SOP, the Chiefs had been taken by McNamara into the new national command center, at that point McNamara was the only national command authority and that was where he should have been. Perhaps more interesting is Taylor's comment to Manchester that he had put a local Army unit on alert because his first thought was a coup - sure wish Manchester had asked him why and who he had in mind.

After pondering this a bit more and going back through SWHT plus the following document: http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=47902&relPageId=2 I'm going to offer some thoughts that might begin to string together... 1. Diaz Garcia seems to have been a militant anti-batista type and revolutionary for many years but as James pointed out, soured on Castro and became dedicated to killing Fidel . 2. When Roselli was brought into the CIA plan to use Havana casino resources to kill Castro he was selected because he had operated there but also because he was close to others who had particularly deep networks there 3. In SWHT I present information from John Sanders, my friend who has done more recent in depth research on Roselli than anyone else, which gives some much better insight into Roselli including his deep connection to Meyer Lansky and to the guys in the Cleveland Gang. 4. Diaz Garcia worked at the Havana Riviera which was a Lansky casino in Havana, with major investment by the Cleveland guys - not a Trafficate casino as Summers has it 5. It has been rumored for some time that Diaz Garcia may have been one of the first Roselli contacts used to try and pass poison in to kill Castro 6. Certainly as James noted, Diaz Garcia may well have had a life outside the casino and done work for Trafficante, Trafficante was well thought of by Lansky, at least early on and for all we know the introduction to Diaz Garcia might have come though Trafficante. 7. CIA records document a Diaz Garcia attack on Castro in December 63 8. CIA records document Diaz Garcia talking about a mission into Cuba to kill Castro in 66 - apparently the same mission that got him killed and Cuesta captured. 9. Roselli created a rather interesting story about people who had tried to kill Castro actually killing JFK, he may have only had to spin it a little. 10. As I speculate in NEXUS, a meeting between Harvey, Roselli and a third party - ostensibly dedicated to closing out the ZRIFLE project on Castro may well have been the kick off for a conspiracy to kill JFK. 11. And in the end, the word is that Roselli was killed because in his conversations with staff on the Church committee, he had mentioned names of the people Trafficante had referred to him for the Castro project, that got back to either them or Trafficante and Roselli suddenly became a real danger for talking too much. ....food for thought, Larry

That's really helpful James and I think it is coming together, his pattern would not be all that unfamiliar. At this point two main things stand out to be reconciled, first the CIA report that Diaz Garcia just missed Castro in a shooting attack at the end of 1963 - the report on that would give no suggestion that it was an Agency operation but one never knows. It would demonstrate he was pretty radical though. The second would be how he hooked up with Cuesta in a relatively risky 66 mission, and one that HDG had remarked to associates before hand was another attempt on Castro. Cuesta was a straight shooter and dedicated revolutionary, so the Cuesta connection is important. Following his capture, Cuesta apparently decided that he might have been set up on the mission and that the Castro forces were waiting on him, he suspected somebody wanted to dispose of him - or possibly Cuesta? It sounds a bit like the Vidal boat mission in 64 that you and I have discussed previously. Independent and possibly a set up.

Thanks James, some of that is certainly matching up, I need to go back and do some detailed comparison. Of course Diaz Garcia is not really a new name in all this, I discussed him and have a photo in SWHT. Escalante surfaced him a long time ago and there was an arrest photo in the book written by the lady who interviewed Escalante - whose name I fail to recall but you will...grin. If you have time give me a sanity test on this - HDG was not a native Cuban, he went to Cuba from Costa Rica after committing murder there. He went to Cuba, got work in the Casino's, became part of the group you mentioned, was actively anti-Batista (an pro Castro/revolutionary, why? seems like he should have been pro Batista) and then become an anti-Castro activist bu the BOP but stayed employed in the Casino's until he came to the U.S. in 1963. There he was debriefed in entry by the AMMOTs - we have those documents - he reportedly tried to kill Castro in Dec 1963 - we have a CIA doc on that - and in 1966 he was off with Cuesta on a mission into Cuba after telling associated they were going off to kill Castro - we have a CIA document on that. How close am I getting, you now it takes me a while to follow along on such things... Larry

Sorry Chris, the casino was in Havana - I modified my post accordingly. According to the interview he had been working there up to the time he managed to get out of Cuba. One of the things that needs to be resolved in the apparently conflicting information in several of the Diaz Garcia documents - they realized that their name traces had some issues but never resolved them. If James can help us do that it will help establish some very important context for what Summers has in his newest edition.

Thank you James, that is a great help - one more question, the Diaz Garcia that arrived in Havana in July 1963 and was interviewed by CIA personnel described having worked at a casino in Miami, first as a security officer and then as a cashier all the way up to his departure. The CIA gives report from his interview and describes his arrival with a wife and young daughter. It also describes him having been in a Cuban jail a couple of times as a suspected subversive, including during the BOP. The interviews and related CIA docs are all on the MFF site. I was struck by the fact that he sounded like a true anti-Castro type rather than some gun for hire but I suppose you could say that about several of the Batista era folks. Is that the fellow in the picture you posted and the reputed JFK shooter or yet a third Diaz Garcia?

James, clearly that Diaz Garcia is not the fellow whose CIA interviews show arriving with wife and young daughter in July 1963 in Miami...there is obviously some confusion over the name, as reflected in one of the CIA name traces. Can you help clear some of that up for us... -- thanks in advance, Larry

Thanks Gary, its interesting that the Howard Williens should bring up the ballistics study as his prime example given the details in your post.....

The page 43 photo is definitely Ted Shackley

As Summers has it, Remegio Arce was a friend of Reinaldo Martinez Garcia and of Herminio Diaz Garcia as well. Reinaldo Martinez Garcia heard from Tony Cuesta, while both were in prison in Cuba, that Diaz Garcia had been a shooter in Dallas. That was after Martinez Garcia had been shown a picture of a dead Diaz Garcia by prison guards - apparently Diaz Garcia's wallet had contained a list with Martinez Garcia's name on it. Martinez Garcia was released from prison in Cuba and came out during in 1980 - after arriving in Miami he went to visit his old friend, Remegio Arce. It was Arce who had introduced Diaz Garcia to Martinez Garcia in the first place. Later, while drinking, Arce confided to Martinez that their mutual friend Herminio had killed JFK.

It's interesting that he referenced the ballistics testing, I wonder if he ever really read the Edgewood report - which adamantly disagrees with the official shooting scenario. The only person associated with that report who maintained a stance for the official scenario was the Commission liaison, the man who was promoting it. You have to wonder if it was ever "officially" reviewed with the Commission and if so how it was characterized.

Its been known for some time that Tony Cuesta told Fabian Escalante that Diaz Garcia had been involved with the Kennedy shooting. That came from Escalante himself, who related things that Cuesta had said during his interrogation. He had been with Diaz Garcia on a mission into Cuba which was intercepted, Garcia was killed in the firefight. Tony Summers relates information which came out of a 2007 call from Reinaldo Martinez Garcia to Robert Blakey....apparently Blackey contacted Summers, the two flew to Miami, interviewed Reinaldo Garcia and ta da, here it is 2013 and we find it in Summers book. Summers provides information gained from Reinaldo Garcia, reportedly a long time friend of Diaz Garcia. He also relates other info about Diaz Garcia but it's not clear that it's all about the same person, as I said, even a quick search of MFF will give you differing documents including a CIA name trace which itself expresses concern that two individuals may be intermixed. In any event, Reinaldo Garcia said he heard the story about Diaz Garcia, while in a Cuban prison with Cuesta, meaning that he uses the same source as Escalante, Cuesta. So Reinaldo Garcia's information comes to us considerably later than the earlier information from Escalante. Summers points that out in the book but he also offers a third party that Reinaldo Garcia cites as personally confirming to him that their mutual friend had done the shooting in Dallas....a fellow known as Remegio Arce. Summers notes that both Cuesta and Arce are now deceased. It is an interesting story and could benefit from serious research, that is as far as Summers takes it however...

Bill, Summers does present that claim in the new version of his book...in fact he brings in not only one exile friend of Diaz Garcia to support it but another as well. The person Diaz Garcia supposedly told was Tony Cuesta. Actually there are some reasons to consider this an interesting lead, although not a new one since this has been floating around for over a decade. Its also very easy to get confused because even the CIA was dealing with name traces which lead to two different people, one a fellow with crime connections and the other a very dedicated revolutionary who did Batista era assassinations, tried to kill Castro in 1963 and then went back into Cuba in 66 in another effort to get Castro - but was intercepted. In fact it seems like that mission may have been leaked to Cuba just as Felipe Vidal's was in early 64. I'm currently going back though all my notes and documents trying to sort out the two individuals, Summers seems to blend them a bit and focuses on the lead as going towards crime figures...of course I think it would be going another way entirely if accurate. -- Larry

A couple of thoughts on this - not to belabor the point but a single lone nut shooter in the TSBD was a creation of the coverup. The shooting itself left plenty of indications of multiple shooters and any frame related to Castro sponsorship could easily have involved multiple shooters. In fact it would be more solid as a conspiracy with multiple shooters. A rifle traceable to Oswald inside the TSBD was more than sufficient to tie him to the shooting. In regard to the Arce figure, its worth noting that there was an older individual name Arce associated with the Interpen training camps in Florida and an "older" Arce was arrested in one aborted boat mission. Beyond that Tony Summers quotes Remigio Arce in Miami, as pointing to a specific individual as a Cuban exile shooter in Dallas. A few years ago I obtained all the available background files on Danny Arce, if anyone is seriously interested in pursuing a lead in a direction connected to him, email or PM me and I will provide what few details that turned up.