Larry Hancock

Sorry David, somebody already beat you to that scenario. I have seen a letter and very large map sent to the WC in which the scenario was that LBJ actually did jump out of his car on Houston, and machine gun JFK on Elm. And the rest of the motorcade turned left on Houston and went out that way... It was extremely detailed, showing Johnson's actual path and the other shooters etc. I think Anna Marie had recovered a copy of it all from the Archives... I've been holding my breath that it would not show up as a 50th anniversary book... so far its pretty much the only thing that hasn't.

David, try The Art of Intelligence by Henry Compton, he was CIA liaison to the FBI on counter terrorism and his observations on that are pretty stark. Its only part of the book though so you might go the library route.

Vince as an alternative I would suggest Ben Rogers and the Pogue Library at Baylor. He has amassed a great collection of research material from Penn Jones to John Armstrong and many others. It seems the ideal place for your material, either as primary or backup.

I'm not quite sure of the first part David, in SWHT I lay out a scenario and connect some dots in a chain that could have influenced LBJ on AF1 and produced the calls from DC ordering suppression of remarks about conspiracy as of that evening. Just a hypothesis of course. As to the Warren Commission, that would directly follow and its clear that Johnson was the key player in that...no big surprise there, President Bush tried to sell Iraq sponsorship to the 911 Commission, but they were a lot more skeptical and the deck was not quite so well stacked since Bush had not done all the appointments. As I've stated before, I believe there may well be a presidential NSAM in place, fully classified, which would have legally driven the cover up. President's do have that sort of power. The question becomes what would cause such an NSAM to be issued. There you can diverge on different tracks, you can make Johnson the master mind and have him cover up his own act, you can have the echelon you are talking about order him to do so, or you can follow another trail which requires the suppression because it becomes apparent early on that there was a domestic element to the conspiracy, one involving intelligence officers, and everybody meeting in the NSC session I discussed wants nothing more than to avoid something that would kill their agency and end their own careers. That's the scenario I follow in NEXUS and one which Bill Simpich will elaborate on in his new work. It so happens that after a career in corporate business I developed a healthy respect for the fundamental power of CYA and career preservation. But I'm not into evangelism on my preferred scenario so I'm happy enough to put it on record and leave it alone....well obviously not totally since I return to pester people with it occasionally as in this post.

Well absolutely you can quote me Robert.....and to elaborate a bit, my view is that even within the first 48 hours there were quite clear indications of multiple shooters and some sort of conspiracy in play. Hoover told that to Johnson on Saturday morning when he advised him about an impersonation of Oswald....what else he told him and Johnson's response disappeared with an intentional tape erasure some time after that as Rex Bradford has demonstrated. Within 72 hours it got even worse, with information out of Mexico City, an early study of the Zapruder film and possibly other things we know nothing about. But there were strong suspicions that it was really not Castro and the Russians, regardless of how many leads are appearing pointing that direction. Of course the leads were actually handy for Johnson as he could use them as leverage to intimidate Warren and others into suppressing a true investigation. But Johnson, being Johnson (and possibly even having had some idea that something was going to happen to JFK that fall, as I also discuss in obnoxious length in the book) needed to satisfy everyone on all points - so the old spin master ran the gamut, for Warren its the Communists and we better not go there or millions will die, for others its retribution and bad karma from the Diem deaths, and for the long run its something like "well maybe there was a conspiracy and Castro was behind it and...but that's old news". For a more accurate discussion of that take a look at what happens when Roselli moved to preempt Garrison with an end run to Jack Anderson and the ensuing involvement of Johnson...that's also in SWHT Nothing like watching a master politician at work. But perhaps the most appalling comment in that quite is not from Johnson, its from Helms. "...when asked by the Congressional Committee if he had ever heard the theory that Castro might have been behind the assassination of President Kennedy, Helms replied that “the very first time I heard such a theory (that Castro might have shot the president on Casto’s behalf) was in a very peculiar way from President Johnson.” ....Perhaps Helms wasn't reading his own internal mail? Perhaps the CIA was too clueless to even suspect Fidel after the assassination programs they were running against him? Certainly Helms missed the newspaper headlines like the one I have in a San Antonio paper which reads something like "Castro Supporter Kills President" What a strange theory, gosh it never even occurred to the clandestine experts, LBJ had to run it past them and then they just giggled....

One of the elements that has to go into this equation is that the Castro Did It theme was reintroduced again and again during the two months following the assassination. It was not something that was "shut down" immediately by anyone. You find it all over the place, coming from either Cuban exiles or particularly from CIA officers working with the exiles. The FBI was quite interested in some of the leads and Hoover even asked permission to put something in the FBI report about foreign influence since he was still looking for Cuban involvement....and Martino was feeding a chain of reports upstream through the Miami field office. Another element, that will become clearer once Bill Simpich gets his book out, is that the highest levels in Washington had a major worry over the weekend following the assassination, and that was that US intelligence officers or someone who had gotten inside information from them about Lee Oswald had been involved in linking Oswald to Castro and Cuba in Mexico City. It would have been the same concern that JMWAVE had when Shackley ordered a secret investigation of exile involvement and then suppressed the reports. And in the end, it would have been the same thing David Phillips admitted to not long before his death when he admitted that a conspiracy involving American intelligence officers had occurred. I'll leave that to Bill, but starting on Saturday morning and going on over the weekend, there was ample reason to suspect that any true investigation of the murder would not lead to Castro but rather to something domestic...and the notes from the national security level meetings on that are gone...we know the subject was discussed but the content of the discussion never went on record..of course few real deep national security discussions ever do, its all verbal.

That's very interesting Josh, thanks for the information! It appears the current production company is in the same state, my friend Stu Wexler has contacted them and referred them to two separate photos which clearly show the SS agent was not holding the AR-15 during the period of the shooting or afterwards. They were totally unresponsive to him and stated they had other information which would corroborate the scenario and their film. So these guys are going into it with open eyes as well... Larry

Steven I certainly agree with your ranking in plausibility! It is an interesting read on a stand alone basis and might very will convince someone coming to the case for the first time. Pat, I've become conflicted about whether a resurfacing of so many scenarios will help or hurt. I think if we could all have agreed just to focus on how many elements of the basic WC story and initial FBI investigation have been brought into question we could really have done some good in opening peoples minds. However it appears what is really going to happen is that everyone is jumping beyond that to pitch their scenario and evil doers of choice - and since who the bad guys were is always more interesting than issues of evidence we may just end up with such a jumble that newcomers to the case will throw up their hands. Very hard to say which message may stick once the year is done...

Nothing ever goes away....it was a fascinating book and has some good ballistics and fragment pattern info. What the author did not know is that the photo of the security car taken at the time he says the agent made the accidental shot clearly shows no weapon in evidence. The author was sued, settled out of court as I recall...but certainly somebody will add more detail. But hey, its the 50th anniversary, everything that was old is new again..

John, I'll give my opinions but they are mixed - which is why I didn't go near the subject in SWHT even though I dealt with Johnson in perhaps excessive length. I'm realistic about MB's personal life and open to the fact that she had affairs and most likely a child with Johnson - Gary, please no emails, as I said its an open issue with me as is the party...I've learned to let open issues lie and consider other leads far more important in the JFK conspiracy which is why I moved on to NEXUS. Since I accept that there may well have been a relationship I don't toss out MB's comments on hearing wild remarks from LBJ. I also have to say I've heard a tape of very early interviews with MB where the party was mentioned which is much more limited and less dramatic than the story that evolved after people started reinforcing her. Having said that, I value the remarks as useless even if made. My view (and contempt) for Johnson is such that I don't trust anything the man ever told anybody. He was paranoid, likely clinically, just as Nixon was. As you know from my earlier educational papers here I consider Johnson quite capable of murder but very much a coward at heart...as his war "record" demonstrates. Based on that any wild remarks to MB would have been either spur of the moment Johnson temper, the Texas trip was a political disaster for him and he was totally nuts by Friday, would have said anything he could about JFK and may have been thinking of getting out of politics before he had to spend more time with the Kennedys. Anything about the CIA and Texas oil would have been pure disinformation. So in the end, since I don't trust anything Johnson ever said any quotes I use for him are strictly to profile his character. As to Murchison, yes I have seen other sources that would support that view....sorry I cannot supply them but when I was researching Johnson I did go into a lot of Murchison material including the shift of a lot of his business attention out of the state of Texas in the later years of the family. I also ran across a fairly reliable statement that he began refusing calls from President Johnson. The Texas trip reflects how far Johnson himself had sacrificed elements of his political base in Texas and his picking up JFK's social agenda for his own - heck, he and Lady Bird had been chased around in down town Dallas while JFK was president, probably better he stayed away or later just on the ranch. -- that's the best I can give you, Larry

Robert, saying anything more would only lead me over the line in moderation - and rightfully so. I think your post is quite enough and everyone will be able to draw their own conclusions. Anyone in Dallas at the Lancer conference will be able to converse with Betty and Casey to get their take on your remarks - and I'll be happy to share as well. I've stated my objection, I'll leave it at that, anyone desiring more can email me privately, Larry

I feel compelled to post an objection to Robert Morrow's remark about Madeleine Brown. Robert, you will likely hearing from Casey Quinlin as you seem to have dramatically mistaken and misrepresented his remarks to you. I'm sure Betty and Connie who were good friends with MB would be appalled at your remark about her being a call girl, as am I. I knew MB farily well at one point and help fund publication of her biography. She worked in a Dallas Ad agency at a time when womens careers were limited, just as Connie worked as a reporter at the same time. To talk about MB picking up tricks at Jacks club is rediculous. Your assumption about her having sex with Ragsdale simply reflects the obsession others have noted here. I'm not sure how all this ties in with current moderation rules but I for one am not about to let you get away with such statements without a factual challenge....hopeful Casey will chime in with his own statement but I'm not sure he is a posting member so ....done... Larry

Great work on finding "Stranger" Bill! I'm certainly continuing to look and some of the military research I'm into these days does take me back and forth across that line of travel so I will keep looking. One of the things that I was surprised about was that a brand new type of voice security system was installed by NASA for John Glen's orbital flight - at the time it was a one of a kind thing requiring custom equipment on both ends of the radio links. I can find plenty of examples of security radio voice systems coming into play in the early 60's but those were almost always land line phones, with send/receive hardware on both ends. Later the encryption gear becomes transistorized and commonplace for radio but during the early 60's it's murky. The other thing that amazes me is that apparently they never had drills on any of the protocols. JFK's personal friend, the Navy officer who literally set up the situation room, got the task of coverting the SIOP into a series of graphic panels which went along with the bomb bag so the president could quickly scan options and pick atomic attack codes. But there is no sign the presidents or VP's every got briefed on ran through operations drills with the material...maybe they did...but maybe not. I have verified that when JFK ordered the SIOP changed following the Cuban missile crisis that it took two or more years for that to happen, apparently not through any duplicity but more sheer beauracracy. Much of what was considred high national security then looks less so now, for example there was a backup national command communications center in case somebody took out the Pentagon...but it had a huge antenna farm, was quite exposed and a Spaznetz team with a mortor could have taken it down in maybe 15 minutes. I have to say as much as everyone dislikes LeMay, it appears only SAC really took atomic warfare seriously. And if their are any baby boomers who want a hard dose of defense reality for the time period when we grew I recommend Shield of Faith by Bruce Briggs. -- Larry

Bill, the more and more I ponder the code books the less I realize we know. So far I've been unable to confirm that even the President's plane carried encryption equipment for secure voice circuits. Whether or not they had secrute data circuits, like an encrypted teletype circuit is another question. It appears they may not have had such equipment other than on the Kneecap / Silver Dollar and SAC airborne command aircraft. One of the reasons the bomb bag officer traveled with the president was to show him the code pages for the SIOP, apparently then the President would use voice codes over a clear circuit from AF1. That explains one set of codes. One other codebook would be the name codes used for the different personages so that you could do clear voice circuits without the world overhearing and knowing who was talking to who. Clearly the plane the delegation to Japan didn't have that book, question is, who did and where were they kept. Its pretty clear a bunch of these protocols never got actually tested in drills or anything like that ....even the bomb code book and SIOP were unknown to some of the Presidents and certainly the VP's. Anyway, I'll be interested if someone has been able to take this communications and code thing futher. After trying to discuss it with one former AF1 comm guy and running into a brick wall it became clear how much of a challenge it was going to be, certainly I never could find anyting in the various books about AF1 or even the Situation Room. -- Larry

If memory serves and mine sometimes does not, the interviews in question were from the history channel special on LBJ that got pulled....at the time I was very interested in it but tied up with a book. As far as I recall nobody ever tracked down the employees and did further interviews with them, that seems like a lost opportuny. If anyone did so I'd like to hear about it. I was also struck by the remark about Hoover flying back to DC after the party, which would have been a very late flight out of Love Field....also wonder if anyone ever checked to see if such flights really existed at the time? Even today you find few flights from midnight to early morning...and again my recollection is that Hoover was confirmed in a breakfast meeting in DC the following day. If anyone has any follow up on those points, it would be appreciated. Larry

Very useful information... "And yet, Snowden, an analyst, claims he had access to “full rosters of everyone working at the NSA, the entire intelligence community and undercover assets all around the world, the locations of every station we have, what their missions are and so forth.” -- as you say, this just does not happen and is virtually inconceivable as are several of his other elaborations. However, there is a third option. He may be a sincere, idealistic young man who did something impulsive over something he objected too and is now trapped in an escalating spiral of hypebole to make his case and defend his action. Impossible to say at this point but we also have to consider "stupid" and "impulsive" right along with "conspiracy"...grin.

In the interest of transparency I just turned 66 so my remarks may be meaningless. I really don't think its a matter of age however but I do think its a matter of "passion". This is a subject that brings out personal passions and to me many of the positions taken are very much a matter of personal world view and even politics. It is also a subject that leads some to what I would term as "evangelism" in their points of view. Nothing wrong with a crusade for truth and justice, its just a question of where you conduct it. Whether or not that passion and evangelism is something the host of the forum wants to go with is obviously their call. As I said in another thread I think it is possible to challenge posted information in a very brisk point-counterpoint fashion without it being a fight....lurkers and readers can make their own call. Its a limited form of peer review. That's a lot different from personal crusades for truth and justice - which can go personal really quickly (not that it doesn't happen in academia too...). Whether or not that's good enough for everyone is the question and the answer is probably personality rather than age. I know both young and old "evangelists". The thing is, there are other forums where passion prevails so there is an alternative there. And with blogs everybody can tell their own view of things...if anyone wants to listen. Or, heaven forbid, you can always write your own book.... -- Larry

Can't argue that at all Pat, will be quite interesting to see what Hunt might actually be suggesting that early. As to the Bay of Pigs thing, I've always had a bit different view. I suspect that Nixon was very well aware that there had been talk and perhaps more than talk about assassinating Castro. Given his pre-JFK administration position he may well have picked up further gossip about those efforts. And we know Hunt had suggested the same thing and had been assured it was being taken care of.,.. Given Nixon's concern for political dirt, I can certainly see his being concerned about just what Hunt might provide the media on Castro assassiantion plans and even on the Operation 40 effort. That's a particularly nasty little tid bid given the existence of black lists and targeted political eliminations. -- speculative of course but I think an alternative for the "Bay of Pigs" thing...

Pat, I wish you luck in tracking down the lead...but its important to remember that Hunt had been making "oblique" references to having insider knowledge of the assassination for years before the so called death bed confession. I discuss this briefly in Chapter 20 of SWHT and David Giamarco presented for almost 2 hours on his and Kevin Costner's offer and attempt to get Hunt on record for literally years before his death. Indeed what he told his son was simply what he had been "shopping" to them for some time - at first for money and later for their agreement to fund his putting it in a book. Problem was he could never offer anything solid in the way of corroboration. I only offer this to point out that the death bed confession was far from unique and Hunt had been talking to a variety of folks about having valuable knowledge - worth a million dollars - on the Kennedy assassination. And of course naming the CIA and Johnson as principals had been bandied about for decades. -- color me skeptical of Mr. Hunt...its too bad Giamarco's story isn't available in print but a room ful of folks heard the details he provided, Larry I probably should add a qualification to the above, certainly I'm not arguing the point that David Morales was involved in the conspiracy nor that Hunt had some valid insights into the assassination, what I'm trying to point out is that would be far different from his "death bed" confession story and how that came about - which relates to his multi-year shopping of the story to Giamarco and Costner. In that story Hunt was very specific about how Morales recruited him, how he turned Morales down and just walked away from him, etc. Its the specific "death bed" confession scenario that I'm addressing here...

Personally I think it would be really nice to have Jaye's research go into a public archive where it would be available to everyone - and that would include all the work on the Wallace print(s). I'm sure Ben would love to have it along with the materials from all of the other researchers which have gone into his archives in recent years. That would make Jaye visible right along with Penn Jones, Gary Shaw, John Armstrong et al. -- Larry

Paul, the U.S. government is a large and diverse entity and discussing "harms way" in respect to it would be beyond me at this point - but I would be interested in seeing sources on the whistle blower observation you made...including who the whistelblowers were and where they took their story and how they were treated. That would be educational. -- Larry

It's not a story I've been following in detail but it is interesting that he seems to be offering operational details about a range of operations from access to servers to other specific phone line monitoring activities in Europe and Asia...not to mention hacking China, how does that match up to what his contracting job was supposed to be? How much do we really know about his purported day job? In addition he has gone way beyond alerting Congress or the American public to monitoring American citizens...something he could have done via a Congressman or other whistle blower alternatives that would have given him some legal protection rather than doing this all very publicly overseas. There is a great deal of drama attached to his approach including claims that even after going public nobody knows here he really is....sort of unlikely actually. And speaking of drama, then there is his girlfriend. He would not be the first to talk about tapping overseas communications though, even those of American allies; a couple of NSA employees defected to the Soviets and provided similar information back during the Cold War.

Robert, just to add a dose of reality and myself being in touch with Gary on occasion - when he has time - as he mentioned he is tied up with both his day job and getting his extensive (thousands of pages) body of work on this and other subjects published. Don't be surprised if he does not respond to you quickly here. For those of us who know Gary and his obsessive (in a good way) attention to detail, he is not someone who bounces on and off the forums. What he plans to share this fall is something he has been working on for decades - and resisting all those of us who pestered him to come talk at the forums or otherwise share bits and pieces of his work in the interim. As he has said, he plans to share it all upon publication and having seen a bit of it myself, in areas I am familiar with, I can only say that once he does it will be at an overwhealming level of detail. -- Larry

Sometimes I think we all take these sorts of questions too literally. Plus none of us, as far as I know, claims to have any real world operational experience as a CIA case officer in the Soviet Affiars division. If we had such a volunteer to step up and give us some real world context for the various Redskin and related operations for putting assets into the Soviet Union at the end of the 1950's we might have a much better insight, as it is all we can do is look at some known operations and speculate. What we do know is that one practice was simply to recruit individuals who were going into a target environment and get them to volunteer to provide information while they were there or after their return. Much of it fairly routine stuff such as how they were handled by Russian security, what they were allowed to do and what they were not - all the basic stuff you could probably classify as "reconissance" for serious spy work. Nobody expected them to steal state or military secrets. From a counter intelligence standpoint it was equally important to find out when, how andwho might try to recruit them from the KGB side while they were there. Lee Oswald went off to Europe to go to a liberal college that was very much of interest to the Agency, George Michael Evica wrote a very detailed book about that which nobody seems to read much - if they do they don't talk about it. Oswald was interested in doing that and he would have been an ideal recruiting candidate - no huge commitment, maybe he's contaced in advance or maybe you just read his letters home. Given his probable volunteer role in providing information to ONI about efforts to get information from young servicemen by communist sponsored bar girls, I'd bet he was contacted. Given his "manuscript" written after his return from Russia, which contains considerable low level intelligence information from his factory work and travels, I'd say he was "debriefed" in a very creative fashion. How and why he was redirected from the college path to defection is another story and one probably one in response to some other Americans who were in Russian about that time. ...and whom the CIA was desparately trying to locate at that point in time. Thanks to Greg Parker and Bill Simpich and some others we have learned a lot more about the quite sophisticated techniques used to manage low level intelligence sources "at a distance". On the subject of this thread, we have also learned a great deal more about how the CIA managed its news "feeds", often simply by arranging to have information or "access" provided to media folks who they had already profiled and were relatively certain how they would approach a story. Bottom line for me is that we often understimate the skill and practices of the Agency on its intelligence collection and counter intelligence activities. And while we would all love to know exactly what the relationship between Oswald and elements of the intelligence community was at various points in time - I'm not sure we can. What we can do is find intelligence "fingerprints" all over his activities, in particular whenever he drastically changes direction - from college student to defector, from the anti-Russian, anti CPUSA remarks in his manuscript to his letters to SWP and CPUSA in which he volunteers his services and even brings up goving underground. Its just that, much as with the exact number of shots and shooter locations, we really want a level of absolute understanding we are unlikely to get. -- Larry

Paul, actually he took along a variety of materials, all intended to establish his FPCC and related bonifides. There is some indication he also had a bogus CPUSA card which throw the consulate staff off since there was no such thing. All this had to do with an FPCC related propaganda operation, likely being run by David Philips as an offshoot of the CIA/FBI AMSANTA project which had been very successful at placing an FPCC sponsored double agent inside Cuba. It was only one of a number of extremely aggresive MC CIA station operations being run against the Cubans at that point. And yes Tommy, Oswald knew quite well it was unlikely he would get to Cuba on that trip, even if he had gotten the paperwork he had no money for the travel or to stay in Cuba. And when the Cubans took time to check him out they would have quickly determined his FPCC links were bogus - plus the only way to get in via MC was for actual pre-arranged FPCC sponsorship. Newman, Scott and myself have all delved into the real reason for his trip, Simpich will be going further with it... Larry