Larry Hancock
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Posts posted by Larry Hancock
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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.
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Pat, just to be clear the remarks about multiple shooters I referred to were not in hindsight, they were simply the impression of the senior NPIC analyst who saw the film projected in real time on Saturday night. He also happened to be a skilled shooter and marksman - but his comments were not based on any detailed study, they were his impression from seeing the film run and rerun at the time and he was adamant about what he saw.
He had no idea who else might have seen that film, he simply helped make story boards from the individual frames specified by the people who had brought the film. He made remarks to them; he was not asked for his technical or professional opinion.
He was also adamant that when he later saw the official version of the film (he was not there to see the film that was projected to select frames for the story boards made on Sunday night) it did not appear to be of the same clarity and detail as what he had originally seen...his remarks are in the link I provided in my earlier post.
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Paul, the storyboard timeline and details are in SWHT (paperback edition) in the Chapter on the first 72 hours....Chapter 15. This comes from interviews and tapes with NPIC staff related to their handling of the film - twice, the second time intentionally compartmentalized from the staff member who did the first set of story boards. His opinion was that the film quite clearly showed concurrent shots and multiple shooters but of course he was only there to pull frames and make the storyboard to go to the people who were given the first shooting scenario (a showing on no record). That was on Saturday; Sunday a film was returned and more storyboards were made ....that became the official single shooter presentation. Interestingly the original boards were stashed in a closet and brought out during the HSCA when staff thought they should be forwarded to the committee - when sr. mgt at NPIC was notified they immediately ordered them destroyed. The second set are what went to NARA and constitute the official record.
This link gives further details:
You can find a report done by NPIC much later but if you take a look its filled with conditional statements and lots of numbers, as I recall it didn't state much definitively. So my referece was to what happened at NARA over the weekend and the personal recollections of the senior man at NPIC who viwed the film on Saturday.
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I did go into this in considerable detail in SWHT/2010 Paul, but as Mike shows we have even more indication of what was going on behind closed doors now. What is clear - to me at least - is that as early as Friday/Saturday there were very positive signs of conspiracy including reports of unknown parties impersonating Oswald and/or being in contact with him - enough so to trouble a lot of people. There were also ongoing signs that JFK had been known to be at some level of risk (and he and RFK both knew it). The first suspects were either the anti-Castro or pro-Castro elements (hence the suppressed CIA investigation), or elements within the CIA itself - we see that in RFK's early calls on Friday which covered both sets of suspects. Multiple shooters were even clear in the first set of story boards made from the Z film, which were shown on Saturday/Sunday and which had to be replaced to show the new lone nut story line which emerged on Sunday due to fears of what a real investigation might show.
What the "missing" verbal pieces cover as far as I an tell is the immediate fear and verbal discussion of what would emerge in a full and open conspiracy investigation - either domestically as it related to the CIA or internationally as it might go back to Cuba/Russia. The urgency of aborting either is shown in the many holes we find as well as in Johnson's direct intervention including his push back against Hoover putting anything in the FBI report about links to Castro or Cuba, which Hoover continued to promote internally for some days. Hoover's frustration shows up in his note about not trusting the CIA because Hoover had became aware that CIA had lied and even managed to have their Mexican security contacts feed FBI misinformation about what had gone on in Mexico City - but had been made quite aware by Johnson that there is going to be no objection to the lone nut story.
Its likely Hoover was also upset because the FBI had been sucked into a lot of work to totally (and quickly deconstruct) the purported meeting between Oswald and Cuban agents in the MC embassy which Phillips and the MC CIA station had supported and which did concern DC for a time after the first three days. But Hoover had been brought into line and once he understood the lone nut story line was not to be questioned he was savvy enough to play ball with Johnson. In earlier days it was not uncommon to talk to FBI guys who were quite open about being told what to investigate and what to avoid - if it pointed to Oswald's guilt go for it, if it included others you find yourself exiled like Hosty.
The holes in the information basically show us that at the highest level the decision was made that an investigation was way too dangerous - but that decision occurred after a good deal of the evidence and a number of key leads had already gone into place during the first two days - which made it difficult and clumsy to go back and take those out of the official picture. If this had all been planned in advance we would have seen the significant number of loose ends emerge from the decades of research, especially from the work of the ARRB.
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I was just on Chuck Ochelli's show with Mike and discussing his new finds, you will find a few related comments on my most recent blog post:
https://wordpress.com/post/larryhancock.wordpress.com/1758
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Seth Kantor had a number of equally important things to say about Jack Ruby ....his book is mandatory reading on this subject:
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You are welcome George and what you posted has been repeated pretty widely over the years, it just happens that I, Larry Haapanen and a couple of other folks decided to dig into the military details over several years, including some aspects related to communications with Silver Dollar / the national airborne command post - exploring the question of whether the chain of command and communications had been broken. It led us into a lot of military and other sources not routinely visited in JFK research and those allowed us to ultimately resolve the question.
I wrote about a good bit of that work in Surprise Attack but things still turn up from time to time, most reflecting that there was a lot more concern about the murder being part of a possible Soviet decapitation strike and precursor to a real attack than was ever expressed in the media. What turned out to be perhaps most interesting in all of that was none of those concerns were actively discussed with Johnson, nor did he assume any CIC role that day....
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Point of correction, on the date of the assassination all commands and all SAC aircraft were in full communications with all code books in place and fully able to respond to commands from the national military command center including both the general elevation of DEFCON which was ordered by the Joint Chiefs with SECDEF concurrence - and and the elevated regional security condition upgrades that were ordered by commanders in the Pacific and European Commands as well as by SAC. The aircraft carrying the people to Japan was not a SAC aircraft nor under its command. And for that matter LeMay no longer commanded SAC but was Joint Chiefs and not in any direct chain of military command at that time.
The story of the one code book in question is complex but it also has to be noted that it had no relationship to military command communications nor for that matter with actual communications with the aircraft itself which were carried out on an ongoing basis.
The most dramatic thing missing out of the whole national security story for that day was Johnson's total lack of understanding or effort to insert himself into the role of Commander in Chief; he effectively bailed out on all his responsibilities in that regard and made no effort to involve himself at all. Perhaps a good thing but a dramatic failure on his part.
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Yes, I watched in live with my parents..their reaction, I didn't have one, was "now we will never know for sure what happened".
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I remember it well from when it came down in real time, and that was critical reporting....sad to see him drift off course...
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I'm assisting in compiling a list of documents which suggest that related but unreleased materials once existed which the CIA has not disclosed - but that list is not related to any FOIA's I have done myself. These documents have already been released, some older and some some either brand new or with new un-redactions. The ones I had in mind in my post have been discussed in relatively recent threads on this forum, such as the document which describes a post-assassination inquiry conducted at JMWAVE for anti-Castro or Castro connections to the attack on JFK.
Sounds like your list is intended to go to the same place my items are...
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Paul, I've been working with Jeff Morley on some articles related to new documents in the recent releases, especially documents related to Oswald and the CIA and to the CIA post assassination investigation that was suppressed and held back from both the WC and the Church Committee (and everybody else). I really don't have any particular media reach myself but am always available to people like Jim and Jeff who do...
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Well done Jim, Hersh has needed this type of deconstruction for a long time...and he has only been getting worse in recent years, always cited as a perennial DC insider and investigative reporter....perennial yes, the investigative part, not so much.
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Not a specific answer to your topic/question but several of us have had an issue with Kurtz for some time and that is with the source material he has referenced in some of his more sensational claims....including remarks about a massive file on Lee Oswald. Of course many of us do believe files there were Oswald files in New Orleans that were either suppressed, or destroyed ,but Kurtz maintained that he had proof of that in specific interviews and records of same.
From a professional university historian that's a serious claim. The problem is that he stated he would make those materials available in a donation to his University library and when my friend Stu Wexler pursued that the was told by their archivist that no such donation had been made nor was there any agreement in place. For some of us that keeps certain of Kurtz's claims in question until his source material question is resolved - perhaps it has been by now.
If anyone has further information on Kurtz's source materials, including notes and actual tapes of interviews, I would very much like to hear about it. If anyone is in touch with him it would be good to ask about the state and disclosure of his research materials.
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Joe, the response motion was only filed late last night, takes Rex a bit to get this material on the MFF site...he does have a day job to contend with...grin.
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I do know Chuck is having problems with his server this week (his primary computer crashed) so that may explain the problem with streaming the interview. The good news is that the blog posts themselves really should give you all the basics about what I know - or have to say (grin) at this point about the relevance of Nagell to the Dallas conspiracy. If not I can respond to questions here.
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Anyone serious about this question need's to read Dick's books, he did a second one which explored some interesting possibilities including the fact that Hecksher was the CIA officer using Nagell in Mexico City. I spent a fair amount of time on Nagell in SWHT but you could pick up the key points from my blog posts:
https://larryhancock.wordpress.com/2013/10/18/tagged/
https://larryhancock.wordpress.com/2022/02/01/richard-case-nagell-revisited/
Per David's question, the CIA did certify that the names in Nagell's notebook were employees, two from California offices and one from HQ.
As to the rest, while there are some fascinating things in the story including Hecksher, who was in Mexico City, at the same time as Nagell and Nagell's abortive vist to the US Embassy in MC talking about defecting and sharing information with a foreign power, there is nothing concrete to establish that Nagell had any knowledge about the attack in Dallas (which is why he does not appear in Tipping Point), although he was prepared to offer information about anti-Castro exiles contacting Oswald and attempting to manipulate him with the contact being in New Orleans in late summer (that does appear in Tipping Point). That in itself would have been explosive if it had gotten into the official assassination investigation, plenty of reason to shuttle Nagell off the record and undermine his credibility.
As with anything related to the assassination, if you try to take Nagell too far you run into problems, if you minimize him totally you risk missing something important he might indeed have seen in New Orleans.
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Underhill's story and his fears feel pretty compelling even though he clearly did have some problems to go along with him. Its pretty amazing that we have learned so much in successive years that thee actually seems to be a pretty solid context for them when you consider the fact that his interest at the time was tracking major weapons sales through distributors such as InterAmco - and we can now even track the sort of serious weapons and ammunition that was being bought for the AMWORLD project in Europe through that network. The SE Asia / drug connection was the wild card, but knowing Hecksher's background in Laos and the Golden Triangle that certainly explains why Underhill might have heard rumors about a SE Asia connection for the people involved in the weapons traffic.
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That's sounds like it...there was a very loud and almost threatening audio associated with mine and it demanded a phone call...which led to lots of bad things including their taking over the computer to clear the lock....bad stuff. They subtly presented themselves as Microsoft support, which they most definitely were not. Pretty convincing and troubling the first time you run into it.
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I recommended Shadow Warfare because it gives details on the AMWORLD operation which would relate to the gossip Underhill was picking up on Interarmco and weapons sales - and a connection to SE Asia and drugs.
As to your characterization of the attack on JFK in Dallas being "outsourced", no I really would not describe it that way - not at all something one would think of as a contract. Tipping Point offers the scenario I think fits best - which does involve some but not all of the characters you mentioned.
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Paul, I have had that experience at least three times on a Windows PC so it may just be an Apple version, its a scam for an offshore tech support group who want to sell you software and support. On Windows it really only hangs up the browser so if you contrl alt delete to escape and shut down all your browser related tasks you should free up the computer. If its the same scam the message hides itself as an attachment to the browser sort of like an Ad. Which means you should clean your system. In any event it sounds familiar so that might be the problem - it does lock up your browser so closing and restarting will accomplish nothing in particular - a reboot will either just bring up that screen or be OK until you use the browser again which will bring up the scary message and lock it in place.
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Paul, if you have SWHT you will find Underhill's experience described in some detail - including the fact that the unusual weapons transfers that he was investigating were the arms sales going from Europe via Interamco to the new Artime/Amworld project. I cover that in even more detail in Shadow Warfare including specifics on various purchases and shipments and who was involved with them (much of that thanks to the research of Gary Murr on Interarmco).
If Underhill had caught specific wind of CIA officers involved in those transfers he could well have triggered his remarks about a SE Asian element being involved as one of the CIA officers most directly involved with the weapons transfers was actually in the process of coming back from Viet Nam to participate in AMWORLD - although he would not become directly involved until early 1964. And of course Henry Hecksher was in charge of the overall project and Hecksher had a lot of baggage coming from having been involved as Station Chief in Laos and then working some covert projects involving recruiting and work with anti-Communist factions in the Golden Triangle who had a legacy of drug smuggling including the early networks running though Nationalist China.
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Its possible either Gary Shaw or Better Windsor might be able to help; I have a vague recollection that both Gary and Jack White had some thoughts on who might have faked it.
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Back "in the day" there was a good bit of talk among Dallas researchers that indeed this document had been was faked by a very aggressive (and dismissive) LN local who knew enough to make it look plausible and then dump it into the community and expose how superficial and knee jerk the CT community was - yes to embarrass the early researchers.
I seem to recall an article in third or fourth Decade, the newsletter from Jerry Rose that went into that, there were suspicions of who was involved. If such a hoax seems totally implausible, we need to remember that at a later date a rather sophisticated memo surfaced, with even the right sequence number, which confirmed Oswald was an intelligence asset....that document caused a real flap since it appeared that it was actually at NARA....as it turned out it was not, but somebody pretty well informed did create it as a hoax and it created quite a flap at the time.
Operation Midnight Climax
in JFK Assassination Debate
Posted
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