Larry Hancock

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.

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.

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: https://forums.livescience.com/threads/senior-cia-officer-dino-brugiono-worked-on-original-film-of-jfk-assassination-confirmed-editing-of-fatal-shot-why-no-media-report.5170/ 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.

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.

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

Seth Kantor had a number of equally important things to say about Jack Ruby ....his book is mandatory reading on this subject: https://www.amazon.com/Ruby-Cover-Up-S-Kantor/dp/0821739204/ref=sr_1_3?qid=1680130266&refinements=p_27%3ASeth+Kantor&s=books&sr=1-3

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....

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.

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".

I remember it well from when it came down in real time, and that was critical reporting....sad to see him drift off course...

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...

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...