Larry Hancock

Very good Don, that's exactly it......to make a point, I'm in no way supporting Easterling's overall story which has many problems. There are two or three points in it that are also

strangely consistent with things we do know. Easterling did not seem to be the type who would be all that creative, and as I recall, Hurt found him and dug out the story.

Hurt also has some fascinating stuff in the book about the dented Hull that Bill would enjoy and also demonstrated it would have been easy to stash any real weapon in one of the big

wooden book containers that nobody ever searched.

There are several things in his book that were interesting although Easterling's story itself finally got to the point of nonsense.....ending up exactly counter to his first information and

implicating Castro.

-- just one more exercise in high strangeness...

I wish I could remember the source, but there was relatively early book which involved a confession from this fellow out of New Orleans...lots of really strange stuff in it but one of the items of

information in the book was that there was a witness the author interviewed who had lived near the short lived exile camp outside New Orleans in 1963. One of the things that puzzled him was that he observed them firing

a rifle into a barrel of water, apparently to recover the shells as well as the hulls.

Just one of those misc. things out of the last decades that you file away and shake your head whenever you think about it again...

Its a fascinating subject for me David as I'm a Vietnam era college alumnae....we have a pretty good idea of what the FBI did against the anti-war movement but I'm not sure that we have a real

clue about the CIA side of it. One of the CHAOS veterans has published a book on it and ties it up in a pretty package but my gut tells me there was a headquarters side to it and an entirely

compartmentalized campaign going on within other areas....I can guarantee they didn't spare the horses on the media side and Alsop was a willing tool.

-- Larry

Again, just a bit of author context for anyone reading this who may not have bothered to look it up....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Hager

Chris, I think the most fundamental issue is who if anyone actually had a sample of the print at this point. Its my understanding that Jaye got a copy from the Houston PD who were in turn very upset when they found out how he was using it.

I would assume then that Walt Brown might have the print. I would suggest that someone contact Walt about the current status of the print and perhaps for some overall comment on the whole issue. If anyone should know it would seem to be he. And if anyone else has a copy of the print that would be good to know too.

-- Larry

Robert and Bill, nobody ever found a case, box or anything related to ammo in Oswald's possessions. I'm pretty sure the ammo was traced to a mfg run by the headstamp on the hull. Gary Murr has taken

that line of research far beyond anyone else and someday hopefully he will publish his voluminous work on it. For the moment, I think there may be a thread here with some of his comments on it

but I have no idea what it was called...

I'm going to offer a couple of thoughts on Fritz handling the hulls....not in defense of him but in regard to the reality of DPD and criminal prosecutions. First off from all that I've learned, DPD was not really

all that much into crime scene work - as you can see by the new "trainee" working the photo angle of the TSBD. They certainly did the basics but in general the legal system in Dallas was if the police

took something to a judge, it was accepted without much challenge or too much question. All of which means that judging the older police officers by what they should have done vs. what they routinely

did with average crimes may be a mistake. Sherry Feister has studied and presented a number of times in regard to their crimes scene practices vs. what were the guidelines of the period and my

take away is that they were pretty loose and that was accepted practice. In the heat of the moment Fritz may simply have made a mistake. As to holding one bullet back, the standard explanation is that

as of that evening DPD still felt they were investigating a murder and would be the primary in that - not realizing Johnson and Hoover were about to take the ball away from them. Hence Fritz needed

to keep a hull so they could investigate where Oswald got his ammo - they needed it for comparison.

Actually I tend to believe Alyea in this and of course he goes much further, saying that the photography of the window and boxes was so screwed up that they had to re-stage and re-shoot it...of course

that would be a gross violation and they would have committed perjury in defending those as the official real time photos. He makes a good case though and I have a healthy respect for stupid

mistakes, and CYA.

More interesting to me is that Alyea is a confirmed believer in the official story and believes all the rest of the evidence - when I asked him how he could accept all of it given what he know of

the hulls and boxes and crime scene....he pretty much just never replied.

-- Larry

I doubt it Bob, but if we are going that route I think Simon and Garfunkel may be more appropriate...

It's a still life water color,
Of a now late afternoon,
As the sun shines through the curtained lace
And shadows wash the room.
And we sit and drink our coffee
Couched in our indifference,
Like shells upon the shore
You can hear the ocean roar
In the dangling conversation
And the superficial sighs,
The borders of our lives.

............we would probably only get a few "superficial sighs" for our dangling conversations - but at least we aren't indifferent...

If you are interested this link will give you a great deal of information on JFK and the project

http://www.lanl.gov/science/NSS/issue1_2011/story4full.shtml

IMHO canceling NERVA was a colossal mistake, but then a lot of that was going around during the Nixon Administration...

Lee Oswald's possible role in regard to intelligence agencies is something we discuss interminably. Its important to remember that intelligence assets don't have to be spy's of the type you find in action novels and movies, they can have much simpler roles. In that regard, the October issue of Smithsonian Magazine has a good article about how the FBI used a dangle in a counter intelligence operation against the KGB in New York City. It really helps to define the very basic and limited role of a dangle and I'd recommend it; I've also blogged some comments about the article in relation to Lee Oswald if you want some further thoughts on his employment as a dangle.

-- Larry

Tommy, not precisely sure about your question but Bill has a number of documents which refer to JMWAVE activities in Mexico City. Actually I mentioned some of this in NEXUS including AMMOT

activity in Mexico City and in particular both JMWAVE folks in Miami and Mexico City suddenly becoming very concerned about the Cuban individual involved in the backchannel dialog

between JFK and Castro in fall 1963....after having no interest in the guy for years he suddenly starts showing up in urgent messages from both locations - with the goal of actually planting

a Miami station AMMOT on him as I recall.

Specifically in regard to the question I'm thinking the most pricise answer might be that there was a JMWAVE subsidiary group in Mexico City, compartmentalized from the CIA station

itself which was, as usual under American embassy cover. Actually its not that unusual to find a separate mission like that, its pretty standard practice and helps isolate the operational

folks, especially if they are also trying to stage operations into third party countries. .

Anyway, Bill will will be telling the story and will do so in much more detail....and no doubt both knows it and is more current with it than I so I'll leave it to him.

-- Larry

And of course everyone is aware of Tom Alyea's observation on this - being that it was not what he saw when the hulls were picked up and that they

were thrown back down again prior to this photo being taken.

Alyea's position as a first day, real time witness to that is certainly clear, he has expressed it in many places and I've had him tell it to me in person.

-- I offer it strictly for reference, not to insert myself into any debate.. Larry

For those going to Dallas in November, Joan will be speaking on Wallace, the fingerprint issue and her book. Early on I shared all the relevant information I had collected and I know she

has spoken with Richard B. and done additional work so her presentation should be the most up to date thing on the subject. I had asked her to present on Wallace and she

graciously agreed to the topic.

-- Larry

It seems a shame that they themselves are not searching out a scholarly venue to learn what they might have missed from folks who have seriously researched their work.

-- not likely to see them joining a self help program though, guess that's just human nature, who really wants to know they made such a colossal mistake...

I'd recommend some internet searching in Richard Bartholomew and the subject of the Wallace prints and unidentified TSBD prints. He has written articles on that which are probably the best

reference. Certainly there were unidentified prints on various boxes...the WC brought that up as an issue towards the end of its tenure, sending people scurrying around to try and match

them to TSBD employees.

Note that Ted doesn't appear unduly stressed or perhaps concerned about the tens of thousands of Hmong refuges he has has abandoned and who will soon be fleeing hundreds of miles on foot to become refuges in Thailand...but they

were good troops while they lasted....

-- just a little perspective, sigh...

I'll add in one more relevant item.

An FBI memorandum states that when administering a polygraph to Frazier the evening of the assassination, the Dallas police showed Frazier the actual bag which was being represented as having

been used by Oswald to carry his rifle into the TSBD just that morning. The actual bag, that Frazier would have seen that same morning. Frazier was adamant that it was not the bag Oswald

had carried into his car just that morning and the polygraph confirmed his truthfulness.

To my knowledge the transcript of that polygraph session has never surfaced and there have been a variety of conflicting remarks by very DPD officers in regard to it. If the FBI memo is accurate

there would not only have been a major hole in the case against Oswald but a serious question as to the origin of the bag in question.

Chris, for reference, I spent over 5 years at two large state universities and you won't find me listed or a photo more than once because it cost...grin. I think I may show up in a couple of dorm group

photos because those are free.

Don't know if its relevant here. I would suggest you contact the University alumnae office or the registrar, if they were enrolled full time as degree students they should show up in the records, if part time maybe not.

Same thing if they were taking night classes or other types of non degree classes. Varies by school I suspect.

I'm not going to say anything further about the book prior to at least scanning it. I couldn't pick up a whole lot from the Amazon page itself and the book is just out...however comments in one review endorse it for

doing something new - covering the "larger context" of the assassination and dealing with powerful elements in the government, their allies in the military industrial complex and in the financial

institutions. It also remarks on the relevance of the book to the current political climate.

......gosh, powerful elites, Military Industrial complex, financial institutions...Vietnam....broader context....sounds like "deep politics", is this really ground breaking stuff? Perhaps its the New World Order thing... somehow

I'm thinking that "relevant to our current political climate" remark may be a clue..... once again time I shut up.

And for those wishing a broader appreciation of Mr. Corsi, I would suggest a bit of internet searching to establish context.

Just for starters try:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerome_Corsi

Its not as if the man didn't carry a bit of political agenda along with his work...

Its times like this that I miss Jim D, he would have far more interesting commentary on Corsi

-- Larry

There is so much wrong with much of the information in this overview that its amazing that someone could be so ill informed at this point in time. Now I admit that if you had just read Howard Hunt's book and The Fish is Red

you might end up with something like this...but that stuff is decades old. Not only that but it mixes in more recent info, just stirred into the pot. For example it has Howard Hunt heading the whole operation and sounding

as if he is the man in charge (OK, so that's from Hunts book I suppose), when the detailed documents we now have reveal that Hunt was at most the sort of political and money type that political action officers always are....as for as his being in charge of exile training in Guatemala, not even close, but an insult to the real military folks who were in charge.

And then for heavens sake it seems to stir RFK and Almeida...the much more recent Waldron scenario that has nothing at all to do with events prior to the Bay of Pigs.

OK, so based on the article it doesn't seem the author has actually JMARC and JMATE documents, has no clue about how the actual project evolved from what Eisenhower approved to what Bissell implemented ...without Ike telling JFK about any changes and probably not knowing himself or about Bissell playing games with everyone over the air power requirements and dooming the landing himself.

Now having said all that, the author appears to have excellent credentials: Dr. Jerome R. Corsi received a Ph.D. from Harvard University in Political Science in 1972. He is a Senior Staff Reporter for WND where he works as an investigative journalist. In 2004, Corsi co-authored the #1 New York Times bestseller, "Unfit for Command" with John O'Neill. Since then, he has devoted his time to writing on politics and economics, two fields in which he has considerable expertise and experience. In his career, he has has written 6 New York Times bestselling non-fiction books.

Given that, perhaps its just the article and overview that seem so ill informed, perhaps the book is much more accurate? I certainly hope so...

I want to second Steve's remarks, I have no doubt Ray's heart is in the right place and I hope things work out for him. He seems to be the sort of fellow who I would enjoy having spent

some time in a pub with and I wish him the best, Larry

It seems relevant for me to note the experience of my friend Connie Kritzberg during the first 24 hours of the assassination. A reporter in Dallas, she had written up an interview very

clearly describing a shot from the front. She turned her story in at the end of the day, knowing it might be the most important news piece she would ever write, and was horrified to

see that the next morning, when it appeared in print, that the wording had been changed. Not a big change, simply a tweak in the wording to make the indication of a frontal shot less

conclusive. She recognized the change immediately and called her editor who pushed back declaring he had not changed her wording. After her pushing him a bit more he

told her that if she had any issues about the whole thing she would need to contact the FBI.

Later her research into the various iterations of her copy suggested that her story had been read over the phone to someone and edited outside the paper itself. Of course she has no

solid proof of that but she is absolutely certain her copy was changed, her editor denied he had done it so as far as she is concerned, it remains an very open question.

-- Larry

Thanks to further info and dialog with Bill and Zach Robertson I've now posted a more detailed piece in regard to Hal Feeny and the complexity of Cuba secret war activities on my blog....

I'm going to "fourth" all this, either the fellow is incredibly ignorant of virtually all contemporary historical work or he has such a political agenda that none of it matters...based on what

I see in most of the talking heads these days, I'm betting on the latter....still, on a national level its just flat embarrassing...