Larry Hancock

That brings up an interesting question Matt, because if it were to be Oswald he would have been required to show passport and visa for boarding the aircraft (assuming it was not a Cuban conspiracy with him acting for Cuba and if so its hard to see them using one of their commercial airliners). Of course if it were full bore CIA that could have been faked with quality documents but still where does he go when he lands? Seems to me that it works better if it just appears the Cubans had a plane waiting for him...but even then why a commercial aircraft. Of course if it had somehow been effectively tied to the Lopez lead it could have reinforced it and perhaps stampeded people in DC in the first 24-48 hours - but neither this or Lopez came forward that early as I recall. I still get the sense that its more like throwing stuff against the wall to implicate Castro and take advantage of events rather than part of a well thought out advance plan.

Matt, over the years their has been some follow up on this, I seem to recall a fairly lengthy article in either the Third or Fourth Decade journal - wish I could rake up more from memory but apparently the story was that the plane was even held up in departure waiting for a last minute passenger - unidentified of course. But there was more detail if you can locate it and all the journals are achieved on MFF. I did manage to locate the following detail in a quick online search: https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/104-10103-10062.pdf I always had the sense that the story, essentially gossip from a questionable source, might have been one of the bits and pieces introduced, possibly by Phillips, post assassination to point towards Cuban involvement. The fact that it was not investigated more diligently at the time certainly suggests to me that it was about the same quality as the poorly done Gilberto Lopez construct. Phillips and his ilk were certainly much better at putting together much better quality disinformation .

I absolutely plan on viewing the movie and will comment on it - for science fiction fans I would certainly recommend reading The Oppenheimer Alternative by Robert Sawyer, its a great alternative history treatment but also has some very solid stuff on Oppenheimer, Groves and Los Alamos.

Its could be a Festo Air Ray. The overall video may be real or not. Otherwise the UAPs have decided they like the Festo look... https://www.festo.com/us/en/e/about-festo/research-and-development/bionic-learning-network/highlights-from-2006-to-2009/air-ray-id_33851/

David, the JFK Lancer site has been down for well over a year now due to issues with hosting and maintenance. I think they hope to bring it back live this summer, possibly as early as June, but no specifics on that.

David, I can't give you a specific source from memory but my recollection is that Phillips went to Mexico City in late 61 as the whole Cuba Project went into something of a limbo in the months following the Bay of Pigs. Certainly he was there in 62 and officially in 63 he began wearing two hats by late summer, being selected by Fitzgerald for SAS and assigned duties in MC for the new AMWORLD project that began to jell during the fall. However his performance review for 63 still came out of MC Station, my files on Phillips are in deep storage but as I recall he did receive two disciplinary citations in 62, one a minor security violation and another one related to some strange effort against the Russian embassy involving radioactive materials - no details on that.

Jim, its on page 9, line 15-20 of the interview transcript: https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=1445#relPageId=9&search=Rosselli_testimony He talks about Johnny Tapps from Columbia Studios who called him in Vegas and told him about the assassination.

Pat, as far as I know the last testimony Roselli gave was in the link Joe posted above: https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=1445#relPageId=10&search=Rosselli_testimony He does mention his contacts with Cubans in 62/63 but gives no real details - although it was suggested he did say a bit more and mention a couple of names in private conversation with staff lawyers not on the record and that was what he was being called back to elaborate on. As you see in the testimony they had really let him dance away from details of the 62 activities in particular. In this testimony he also described being in Vegas on November 22.

I can't give the source from memory, its one of the biographies, but the author apparently tracked down a story that in his last testimony Roselli had mentioned true names for some of the Cubans who had been involved in the early poison plots....although it was in closed session, staff members talked about that and work got back to Miami that Johnny was slipping with age and might say something even more dangerous during his next round of interviews....which led to his being killed by some of the individuals he had worked with directly in the earlier days, people he thought had secrets to protect but without knowing they had come suspect he might make get carried away with his story telling next time around when he was going to get asked about the Harvey period of time in 62/62 rather than the earliest days of the poison plots during the initial Cuba project period back in 60/61..

Thanks Ron, you beat me to it on the sources. It should be noted that the FBI surveillance on Roselli was so tight that they monitored his personal car in LA daily and also had a watch on him (among others) at arrivals and departures at the Vegas airport. Roselli was aware of all this which is why he even fed a bogus line to one of his girlfriends who was an FBI source in conjunction with that trip by he and his buddy to Arizona. Beyond all that we also have an anecdotal report from a lawyer whose partner told him that on Sunday he received a call from Vegas by someone whose voice he recognized because they had met before and that the call had to do with obtaining a lawyer for Ruby - he identified the caller as Roselli and it was made clear to him that the payments would need to be fed though Ruby's brother so that nobody would find out who was paying for Ruby's defense. All third party of course - this is in SWHT - and I did get some confirmation from the law partner. No way to firm it up but it was more indication that Ruby's act against Oswald was unplanned and as with many other aspects whatever the plan had been it had unraveled the afternoon of November 22 and Ruby had been called in as a last ditch effort to make sure Oswald was not going to be talking - or go to trial.

Rex did a lot of quick work and the new releases are now online and searchable at MFF: https://maryferrell.org/php/showlist.php?docset=2149

Paul our team is worked hard on maintaining a tight focus on "Intentions", with a first look at the military domain. The first paper out is a pattern study and the following paper will apply intentions/indications analysis to prioritize the a series of scenarios related to the military domain. The first paper is some 64 pages, the second will be close to 50 and is going into peer review now - as you can see from the first one this is a very rigorous process. As to your question, we have tried not to prejudice our studies and have avoided the question of "origins", just looking at intentions in one specific domain - the model we have developed can be used to study other domains of course, for those willing to devote the level of effort required. Once we finish our studies in this first area I would be more comfortable speculating about origins; what I can say at this point is that there certainly is firm indication of intelligence associated with UAP activity, with focused intentions and that the unidentified intelligence involved certainly has a very good grasp of atomic physics, and both military and peaceful applications - and they appear to have had a monitoring program in place which detected and responded to our first effort to move from scientific inquires into major radioactive materials production. I would also add that the UAP activities we see currently, as far as we can see them, as related to the Naval test and exercise areas off both our coasts, are very much in line with the monitoring of advanced weapons monitoring that the UAPs conducted when the first ICBMs went into operation and then again when MIRV warheads were introduced. Today it appears the focus is on anti-satellite capabilities and our most advanced aerospace surveillance systems...which up to now have been associated with AEGIS cruisers. And interestingly the UAP flight capabilities seen now are pretty much the same as reported by the Air Force in the initial years of Air Force interceptor engagements with UFOs. -- my usual long winded and conservative answer..grin... Larry

If you want something more substantive dig into this work...its ongoing but even this first study has pretty well consumed my life for the last three years: https://www.explorescu.org/post/scu-publishes-uap-pattern-recognition-study-of-the-us-military-atomic-warfare-complex

Jim, DeMohrenschieldt covers that in detail in his manuscript on Oswald, see this link. http://22november1963.org.uk/george-de-mohrenschildt-i-am-a-patsy-chapter22 Its well worth the read not only on when and where he found it but what happened afterwards and how it became public.

Ron I would recommend this one by Rappleye and Becker : https://www.amazon.com/All-American-Mafioso-Johnny-Rosselli/dp/1569800278

I wasn't either Bob, when I started out I had the same impressions of Roselli, largely from JFK books. It wasn't until I started going out of the box and looking at other sources that it became clear that as with most things, the Roselli of the 1960s was not the street hood of the east coast or the soldier from his time in Chicago but after he hit LA becoming something very different, to the point where describing him as a mobster falls way short of the mark. He stayed tough but as his business cards stated, he became a strategic consultant - in where to put major skim monies, first in entertainment in LA then in entertainment and gambling in Vegas. He became the "outsider", able to do business with anybody because he did become independent. It was also important to see the FBI documents that noted crime in LA was quite different than in most other cities, much more financial in nature and much harder to deal with for that reason - which is why they were going to such links to leverage his citizenship problem to bring him on as an informant. Given his financial orientation he could have opened the door to numerous RICO investigations.

Mike, Bobby did go back to LBJ and ask him to support the Cuba projects that were already underway or at least getting started militarily but I think that was two or three months after the assassination. LBJ was lukewarm about it and none of the projects were cancelled immediately, AMWORLD began military operations in late spring and continued well until 1965. Several of the other SAS/WAVE anti-Castro activities continued over the same two years but over time funding got reduced, people got pulled to go to SE Asia - basically LBJ had no interest in Cuba and began to be consumed by SE Asia. Its not so much that Lamar's facts about various activities related to a potential coup are wrong per se, its just that he pulls it all together into one consolidated operation, and added a chronology which just does not work with what we know now from actual CIA operations documents, not to mentions documents from the covert actions oversight group or the interdepartmental Cuba project JFK was sitting in on over that period. Basically in early 1964 RFK made a pitch to support all anti-Castro operations with the same level of endorsement and attention JFK had and Johnson was just not going to do that (actually at that point you would have been hard pressed given the memos we now see to find anybody in AMWORLD or at WAVE that thought any of the projects had any chance of success). I cover the history/chronology of AMWORLD in considerable detail in Shadow Warfare and cite sources which include both documents and various newspaper articles which began to show up as Artime's activities became pretty well known, not the guy to pick to lead a covert/deniable operation. That is the best place for a list of sources. Lamar and I both discovered AMWORLD independently, about the same time, and actually he asked me to hold back writing about it as his book was coming out...I didn't know where he was taking it and was shocked by the book. Stu and I both made our issues known as we were in pretty constant contact with him for some time around then and it was all done with no hard feelings but I haven't been in touch with him for years now.

I've written about this extensively so I won't repeat all that, there is a whole chapter on Roselli in SWHT. Yes Harvey and Roselli were personally very tight and as I wrote most recently in Tipping Point Roselli did play a role in the attack in Dallas, putting together the connections to bring in Ruby as a support role. However Harvey had warned off Roselli from any contact with Giancana et al when he brought Roselli into Mongoose and reactivated the Castro assassination project - adamantly telling him no further contact with them was to happen, and Roselli complied. If you really dig into Roselli you find that his contacts with the godfathers were all peripheral, just part of his "consulting" and financial placement business, he was a broker for skim investments. But his real mentor was and had always been Lansky, very much an outsider and often in competition with the others, especially in the Casino years in Havana. Anyone who does not have that history really does not understand what was going on circa 63 or how much it was different from only a few years earlier in 60/61 when Roselli was first contacted for the Castro assassination plot. Bringing up Roselli in regard to the conspiracy makes sense in my view, but it has to be done in a realistic way and in an accurate context - which is not one that involves him on the ground in Dallas (just plain silly) and certainly not as a shooter.

Gerry, start with this link below and I think it would help a good deal with what was actually in play in 1963: https://www.maryferrell.org/pages/Tipping_Point_Part1.html But you are not far off on the overall strategy. In 1963, as part of the switchback program JFK had ordered to move covert military action from the CIA to the military, he had directed the Joint Chiefs to prepare a contingency plan for responding to a coup in Cuba (this plan was in fact part of what Lamar writes about). However the JCS and CINCATLANTIC, who was given the task of taking on that role, were still in the development phase on the plan and if you take a look you find no special naval, air or ground forces had been designated for such a role and certainly none had been assembled or staged for action in December 1963. Planning yes, ideally one or a combination of the varous CIA coup efforts might have at some point triggered an internal uprising or at least some assassinations inside Cuba, ideally then Artime with an operational AMWORLD group could have gone into Cuba and appealed for America support, triggering the American military contingency plan (all of this would have been a repeat of the original Cuba Project plan originally approved by Eisenhower, even the players like Artime). The problem for Lamar's book is that all those elements were being discussed, but in reality had were only just beginning in the fall of 1963 (Artime only began to purchase equipment and bring on volunteers as of November/December 1963 - he had no resources for the coup Lamar describes as of December). Its a trap all of us can fall into, with newer research and materials presenting a fuller story than what was originally visible from bits and pieces.

Gerry, the CIA made contact with Cuebela as part of it many efforts intended to stimulate a coup; he brought up the necessity of killing Castro for a coup to proceed as did virtually everyone else they contacted - this is all documented in detail in CIA reports. Cubela asked for a rifle, then the pen was brought up and to maintain contact with him they were going to give him what he wanted in hopes something would jell over time. Cuebela was just one of dozens of things SAS and WAVE were throwing against the wall in 1963, none of them especially well coordinated...Commando Mambesis was another, totally run by wave and in direct conflict with what Artime and separately Rey were doing - separate from Cuebela as well. All I can do is to refer you to my research and writing as I did above, I'm happy answer questions but don't really have the time to start from scratch given what I've already written and made available....not trying to be difficult but all this has been discussed many times before, even here and by others than myself, Jim D has posted on Lamar and his book in the forum numerous times.

Numerous researchers including Jim D and myself have pretty thoroughly deconstructed Lamar's mistaken premise of a December coup - Lamar confused the AMWORLD preparations as being involved with his speculative Almeida coup (which was separately refuted when research showed Almeida was not even in Cuba on Lamar's dates). Miscellaneous documents which Lamar had pulled into the story can now be shown simply to have been part of other new CIA initiatives, which did relate to the hope of creating a the context of a coup but other documents now reveal that Castro's intelligence had compromised almost all the on island Cubans who the CIA was trying to involve and Castro let them know he was watching them. All of the above, the real picture of what was going on with the administration's efforts against Cuba in 1963 are discussed in some detail in Tipping Point, and clearly although a coup was talked about even the most basic elements to support it via AMWORLD did not go into play until late Spring 64....boats, weapons, people etc. And those were not canceled by LBJ, as it turned out the whole concept was so weak and Artime such a poor leader that AMWORLD foundered even after it did launch (details in Shadow Warfare). All of the issues with Lamar's Almeida coup concept were shared directly with him by Stu Wexler, myself and others but of course the book was already in print; a planned documentary based on it did not occur. Its another of those pieces of JFK research which just did not hold up under examination and review but unfortunately those sorts of things never really go away.

There is only one edition of Creating Chaos, given that it predicted much of what came to pass in Ukraine and with the revelations of Russian sleeper agents and their activities I decided events had overtaken me and decided to just let it stand. I can't really think of any books that focused on the CIA's use of that sexual blackmail - I suspect because most of what did occur would have been done overseas, especially in Europe. Generally speaking during the first Cold War the US focused on a combination of technical information collections (Staff D), code breaking, intercepts etc combined with literal covert warfare in a host of deniable military actions. In turn the Soviet Union focused on political warfare and its related tactics, including all types of blackmail. The Soviets played the game with the classic tools of empire, European style. One non-European example would be Mexico where the CIA did a deal with the President's office to run phone taps and as part of the bargain and provide recordings of his opponents for his political use, some of that information might have been used for blackmail. Its not impossible other technical collections were leveraged with political allies in other countries. If you read Poisoner in Chief you get a feel for why the CIA was interested in LSD and in drug related "technical" tools, for interrogations, and for covert intelligence collection from people who would give up information without even realizing it...a much more direct (albeit more brutal) and "scientific" approach. Intelligence American Style (and yes I stole that from the seventies TV show).

One example I can think of is that Robert Maheu was used by the CIA to do electronic collections on international visitors, especially in New York at the UN. He was also used to recruit prostitutes in conjunction with that and I suspect that was not simply to get the targets in a position to talk for recordings. In another instance circa 1963 CIA was using information about an affair by Cuban diplomat Lechuga in an effort to persuade his wife to become a source for them. I get a sense that the CIA used sexual blackmail more selectively and tactically than the Soviets who used it more often and over longer periods of time - I wrote about some of those incidents in my book on political warfare, Creating Chaos.

I would seriously recommend Poisoner in Chief as a source for details on Midnight Climax and the overall CIA debacle with LSD, its one of the most egregious and saddest things I have ever seen and gives great insight into the character and role of George Hunter White as well as Gottlieb and a bit about Jolly as well. Its excellent background and goes into details of White's correspondence with Gottlieb... https://www.amazon.com/Poisoner-Chief-Sidney-Gottlieb-Control/dp/1250140439

As far as being in the dark, perhaps the simplest answer is that they knew the President had already been at risk by US and CIA backed Cuban exiles - and perhaps rogue CIA officers working with them. Which clearly were RFK's very earliest suspicions. If that were true they would be protecting themselves and the CIA as an entity at the height of the Cold War - not being in the dark and suspecting the very worst would be pretty close to the same thing.