Larry Hancock

Tosh, I can supply a little information although I don't know if Black is still alive, if so he would be quite old as he was certainly middle aged in 1963. I've certainly never seen him on any suspicious death lists. Black's connections were almost entirely high level legal and government associations, he was one of the first "super lobbyists" making hundreds of thousands of dollars from corportations circa 1960. His two major clients appear to have been North American Aviation and Howard Foundries, both with significant government contracts. He was the subject of both FBI and Congressional investigation related to both those clients, the Baker affair was big trouble to him but even more was the Howard Foundry investigation which blew up in 1964 and was a major concern to Johnson as it involved a 2.7 million Air Force contract. Black was also the subject of an FBI wire tap investigation and successfully challenged the FBI in Court and as part of the Baker thing. I recall seeing Black testimony but I don't know if that was HSCA or some of the other investigations, in any event Black said as little as possible and pretty much denied knowing anybody he was asked about other than in passing. I don't think there has ever been any sign that Black had been associated with operational Cuban exiles or really with anybody other than lawyers, high ranking government employees and various high flyers within the Las Vegas and L.A. crime set such as Roselli and Levinson. -- Larry

John and William, there were a host of warnings from Dallas and Texas in general. Some in writing, most verbal. From community leaders, from politicians etc. Manchester probably does the best job of laying out exactly how many warnings with examples - in several cases the folks were worried enough to go to Kennedy's staff. Remember, the fears of violent demonstration were strong enough for the City Council to pass a special law dealing with that specifically as a last minute precaution for the JFK visit and the Chief of Police felt strongly enough to go on public TV to call for everyone to help the police quell any such demonstrations or protests. -- Larry

Tim, I'm very interested in the FBI/CIA records which identify Roselli as "Col" ......I'm familiar with the name as an alias but I'd really appreciate the document references where is is discussed with a military rank.. -- thank you, Larry

As a follow-on to James remark, it is interesting that in his DPD statement immediately following the assassination, Arce gives not only the names of fellow workers but that it is not necessarily just their first names as he might have heard them called but in most cases their full names. Seemed interesting for a virtual new hire to have that complete a knowledge of all his fellow workers. About the only other thing of note is that based on arrest records it appears that he developed a pretty bad drinking problem starting not long after the assassination. -- Larry

John, Cubela was not executed but spent several years in what was reportedly pretty light confinement - not exactly the sort of thing you would expect for someone who had offered to kill Castro for years. As I recall he was eventually released but I don't know when or if he is deceased. It's important to know that Castro was extremely good at compromsing potential "traitors"; the records we have from AM/TRUNK and AM/WHIP tell us that Castro approached many of the less trusted members of his cadre and would tell them that he knew the CIA would be approaching themand that all they needed to do was report the fact to him and play along and there would be no problem. This worked really well and CIA eventually shut down the whole project because they realized that virtually everyone had been compromised and was under surveillance. It's almost impossible that Castro did not suspect Cuebela or take some special precautions considering Cubela's relatively frequent foreign travel. -- Larry

Shanet, CIA used crypts written communication "crypts" for individuals, for groups and for projects. Normally all CIA officers used crypts in internal communications and in their professional contacts. Carlos Prio Socarres was a former Cuban President and one of the old school leaders among the Cubans, he helped finance Castro's overthrow of Batista and then went into exile. His surrogate political action man after that was Dr. Antonio de Verona. Verona's cript was AM/HAWL Rolondo Cubela was a Cuban student leader who was pretty much a competitive leader to Castro during the overthow of Batista and became part of Castro's ruling clique. However he was recurited by the CIA and for a number of years was courted as a CIA asset; Cubela offered numerous times to assassinate Castro but the CIA was more interested in him organizing a coup. It is still a matter of debate whether he was sincere of a Castro double agent. His crypt was AM/LASH. -- Larry

Tosh, there is a huge amount of information about both Black and Morgan available. Black was investigated very througly because of his business partnership with Baker, the Baker influence pedaling scandal and later because of other charges brought against Baker for at least one of his other clients. Morgan and his role are documented in State Department documents, Church Committee documents and HSCA documents all of which resulted from the investigation of the CIA's use of Roselli. Fred Black is also covered extensively in the autobiography of Roselli. -- Larry

James, a few years ago Carlos B. began selling certain items online and since that point I know several researchers who have chatted with him on line and one who went to the effort of going down and meeting with him. The net result is that Carlos sticks 100% to his remarks about Oswald and Castro sponsorship and that is all anybody is going to get from him. Having him at a conference would net you the same story that is in print in many places....it might be interesting to some to meet him as a witness to Oswald but I don't think it would contribute anything to research per se. However I don't know of anyone who has ever offered him an invitation. On the other hand if the DRE DIA memo files were to come to light they could possibly go a long way to resolving the whole question of the initial contact with Oswald and the exile reaction to him. It's pretty hard to belive that they would not report a suspicious new contact or talk about the leafletting or street encounter. -- Larry

James, I think a Morley/JFK search will show you some background on this but as I understand it much of the question comes from the fact that we know that the DRE was very involved with Oswald in NO - from the scuffle to the radio debate and they were supporting the preparation of a good deal of propaganda material against Castro and the FPCC based around Oswald. DRE was amont the first responders after Dallas to jump in with a comprehensive Castro was behind Oswald story, in both NO and Miami. Now the DRE was one of the exile groups courted at length by the CIA not for their operations use but because of their great intel links into Cuba, they maintained some of the best contacts going and CIA wanted that intel. So they had a CIA case officer and there should be extensive DRE files. As it turns out their case officer worked with the HSCA, never mentioning his assigment of course nor anything he might have seen in DRE files about the Oswald contacts. We are beginning to see large amounts of documents on various exile groups and there should be some files for the summer and fall of 63 showing us their take on Oswald, nothing like that has yet turned up. I know Jeff is still doing field and NARA research on the subject but that's all I know; at the moment it looks like one of Peter Dale Scotts classic "holes", you look for what should be there and when it's gone you have a clue you may be going in an important direction. ....Larry

I just wanted to let everyone know that we have been able to gain Jefferson Morley as a speaker for this year's conference. He will be doing a presentation on the CIA and the Kennedy assassination. Mr. Morley is a world news editor for WashingtonPost.com and does a weekly World Opinion Roundup column. He is known for his research on the CIA's obfuscation with both the Warren Commission and the HSCA; he has also focused his attention on Oswald in Mexico City and to Oswalds contacts with the DRE. We are very pleased to add Jeff as one of our conference speakers and Debra has also asked me to announce that she is holding the early bird conference fee open to the end of this month so you still have time to register and get the lower fee. Just go to: http://www.jfklancer.com/dallas04/index.html -- I hope to see many of you in Dallas next month, Larry

Carly, in evaluating the content of the report, a very useful approach would be to look at the internal dialogs that went on among the commissioners. That sort of information has not been available for view until the records releases of the 90's however now it is easy to find evidence that the Commissioners themselves realized how "controlled" their content was.. Examples: 1) The Commissioners can be seen to complain that they have no real investigators of their own and that they are totally dependent on the FBI for field work. They were well aware that the FBI had already concluded their own investigation and published their own findings so it was very unlikely that Hoover would be enthusiastic about his agency turning up something during the tenure of the WC that would show his own work to be at fault. The FBI had already found for "no conspiracy", the WC was expected by LBJ to simply endorse that finding (as confirmed in released Johnson tapes) so essentially WC was constrained by both LBJ and the FBI report (which had been issued with only a few weeks of investigation; eseentially compled within two weeks at the most). 2) When presented with indications that Lee Oswald was an FBI informant the WC members can be seen discussing the fact that they know Hoover would never admit such a thing and they have no leverage to pursue the issue. 3) The FBI itself can be shown to have manipulated evidence given to the WC, examples include the Hosty note and sanitizing of Oswald's notebook. They can also be shown to have witheld information (Secret Service Agent Patterson's report of a dialog with Hosty about Oswald meeting with subversives). 4) When pressured over specific issues by the WC and asked for further investigationt the FBI can be shown to have obfuscated - examples are the Sylvia Odio incident and the unidentified box fingerprints from the sixth floor. My point would be that when addressing the content of the WC work you have to evaluate the investigative resources that were avilable to them, the management of the data provided them and the fact that their staff were not trained criminal investigators or even criminal attorney's (perhaps explaining many of the rather pitiful witness interviews). A good DA with an experienced crime task force might have had a chance....equipped with the power to plea bargain...which of course the WC did not have either. Unfortunately the WC was a committee, not a criminal investigation. ...hope that helps a bit Larry

Hi Chris, nope for a change they passed on St George and it was Billings who went on the mission. And Billings would go on to join the Life team in Dallas, to spend time on the Garrison investigation and then to take a contract from Blakey to write the summary for the HSCA. And some of the other TILT alumni would go on to Watergate - guess Billings got the best of the deal. -- Larry

Steve, I will try to get it off this afternoon - I will only be faxing you the personnel for Region II which included Dallas. There were a lot of other Regions and that get pretty extensive. In addition there was the 316th but it's personnel in 1963 were largely virtual since it was moved into Texas with no personnel and during its start up period its staff were 112th HQ staff who wore two hats...including its Commander William Reich. 112th HQ at San Antonio was commanded by Williard Mize, with William Greer as its Ops officer (contrary to Jones claim that he was Ops officer), Jones as G2 intel. Region II (Dallas) was commanded by Roy Pate with his Deputy commander as Edgar Boyd....it was one of those two who should have been called to testify on the 112th in Dallas, not Jones. -- Larry

Steve, I'm sorry but its several pages as I recall (it was on the CD I did but I'm guessing you don't have that?) and I don't have a scanner myself. If you email me a FAX number I can dig it out and FAX it to you sometime this week... -- Larry

Shanet, I'm trying to deliver the background so that we can all be in the same place discussing it. For myself I too think it a little convenient that Oswald kept building an evidence trail against himself - yet was pretty sophisticated in using PO boxes, aliases, fake ID etc. Did he bury the rifle and dig it up later, was in a panic over the photos and tampered with one yet saved them all.... I also have a healthy skepticism about at least two other instances where the WC sent the fBI back to the drawing board and they came up with neat answers which later proved to have holes in them e.g. the Odio incident and the unidentified box prints. However I think we still have to be straight about the history of the photo and when it was tampered with and there is a factual trail here. Where you go from there is another story, I was not offering conclusions only "impressions" which are suggested by the record. -- Larry

Because of the interesting dicussion on another thread, I've spent some time preparing a short background document on this. Gary Mack was of major assistance and his factual input (not necessarily his judgements or conclusions) was key in getting this laid out as were the two web sites referenced below. I hope everyone will comment at will. Seems to me there are still a couple of interesting open issues but they are not the fundamental ones we discussed earlier. The Walker 57 Chevy Photo / Background A great deal has been written in regard to a photo of a 57 Chevy in the driveway of General Walker’s house. Most of the attention comes from the fact that the license plate of the car was scratched out on the photograph which was turned over as evidence to the Warren Commission. The general assumption has been that the photo was tampered with after it was in the custody of the Dallas Police and before being handed off to the FBI and hence the Warren Commission. The belief that the photograph was had been tampered with after being taken into evidence by the DPD arose from the appearance of the photo in another photograph of an evidence lay out which appears in Chief Currey’s book. In that evidence photo there appears to have been no tampering with the plate as of the first weekend after the assassination (the Oswald property of which this photo was a part, was turned over to the FBI on November 26). However, John McAdams presents a convincing case that the image was tampered before it was taken into custody. http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/plate.htm The Warren Commission gives us corroboration of this point because this photo was the subject of an inquiry by the Commission in May of 1964 - essentially asking when, how and why evidence recorded as coming directly from Lee Harvey Oswald had been subjected to such obvious tampering. This prompted the FBI to investigate and their inquiry is summarized in a Commission document, which may be viewed at: http://www.history-atters.com/archive/jfk/...Vol22_0306b.htm The gist of the report is that the FBI verified the photo as being on an inventory list of Oswald property taken by the DPD. Two officers (Stovall and Guy Rose) were willing to state that they had noted the photo (and the damage to it) during their recovery of material from the Paine’s house. The FBI also confirmed that the photo was indeed from the Walker residence and managed to date it as being taken March 8-12, 1963 based on adjacent construction and an inspectors log. Apparently they had some help in this effort because the DPD (Detective Hart) also was able to tell them that the car itself was owned by a Mr. Klihr from Irving; the FBI verified his ownership of a 57 Chevy and listed the 1964 tag as NM2893. We do know that Klihr and his wife were Walker volunteers, Klihr had been interviewed by a local newspaper after the shooting in 1963. A ‘57 Chevy and an individual who appears to be Klihr can be seen in WBAP-TV footage taken at the Walker house shortly after the shooting. It may be that this coverage led the DPD to Klihr, there appear to be no DPD memos on this in their Walker file and the FBI does not provide any further reference to tell us whether the DPD even interviewed Klihr. The FBI itself certainly did not interview him. All of which leads to the impression that: 1) Oswald himself tampered with the photo for some reason. 2) Oswald was concerned about the car being identified yet did not just destroy the photo. 3) Oswald took the Walker photos shortly before ordering a rifle. 4) Oswald had a real habit of keeping incriminating evidence. Walker “stalking” photos, a Walker related note to Marina, back yard photos with weapons. And open questions about the DPD investigation of the photo, including whether or not Mr. Klihr verified that it was his car on that date and whether or not he might have seen anyone taking photos in the area or otherwise skulking around.

John, as to questions 1-4 my impression is that Hoover was simply the victim of a host of similar misinformation coming real time out of Dallas via media and other sources. Hosty gives a good feeling for how hectic things were and its not like Hoover had radio equipped field people on the scene of the incidents; he was getting bits and pieces picked up in the Dallas office and relayed to him. It would be an interesting research project to go through the airtels and memos coming out of Dallas that afternoon and check his phone log for calls to and from Dallas. However until someone does that I think the simplest answer is not that things were changed but rather that he was as misinformed as those hearing many of the incorrect and incomplete broadcast news reports. Yes, Rubenstein was a name contained in Ruby's files. Remember, Ruby had even been an FBI informant circa 1959. On 5-7, Warrent felt that it would conflict with his role as Chief Justice, especially given the fact that there was no legal grounds for the WC per se. I suspect he also realized he was being used to add an air of legality to something which clearly was not - witness the lack of any legal defense for Oswald. And Johnson did use inferences from Mexico and talk of atomic war to bully him into it. As far as Russell goes, he was not interested and especially not interested in serving personally with Warren so he but bullied too, better yet Johnson announced him and then told him what he had done. I have no ideas on the tape destruction but since I will be seeing both Rex and Bell at the Lancer conference in Dallas in a few weeks I'll ask them about it. -- Larry

Good one James, I do recall that now - although it's hard to tell who was being less cooperative, always good to see the FBI being consistent. Interesting that Klier was apparently not interviewed - which means perhaps nobody really wanted to follow up on his car being there? That sort of leaves both my suggested options open - a) complicity in the shooting hoax and not wanting to be associated with Walker. And yes, I assume the photo was tampered with while in DPD custody and before it went into the WC files....although I am unclear as to the time frame for that it does not seem like it was done too quickly. We know Walker had supporters on the force, they might not have known a report had been submitted to the WC or that the FBI had investigated but Walker or perhaps even Klier might have wanted the solid evidence showing him at Walkers house at a particular time to not be so solid. -- Larry

Way to go Roy, should have known you would turn it up. As far as James question goes though, to really evaluate it requires a concrete time line. Could someone give us the date in which the photo was taken (was it after or before the Walker shooting attack...before I think?). Obviously it did not have the liscence tag scrapped off until in the first few days after the assassination as somebody had to have time to take the number down and then do the investigation. Any clue on when it got tampered with? Certainly it seems pretty stupid to intentionally tamper with evidence after it has already served its purpose? Or is it just possible that Mr. Klihr could have been involved in the bogus attack on Walker. possibly at Walker's behest. We know that later on the DPD evolved their Oswald shot at Walker scenario to help make the picture of Oswald as a mad rifleman stick; perhaps at that time they might have regretted having anything in hand that could have pointed in some other direction...raw speculation of course. And of does anybody have more detail on Mr. Klihr and his the nature of his association with Walker.....is there any chance we have a public morals issue here rather than conspiracy? As I recall DPD did arrest Walker at some later date on a morals charge...I had a DPD Reserve intel officer go over the details of that, just can't remember the date. -- a very interesting topic for sure, Larry

Because of all the controversy surrounding this tag I spent a fair amount of time researching what had been written about it while I was working on my book - I really wanted to include it as a tie to Miami in the way others have written about it previously and per remarks by the mysterious Col Bishop. In doing so I discussed it wth Mary Ferrell and she related to me that in her early investigation she had found internal documents at the DPD which gave the liscence plate number (it was a Texas plate) and that they had even traced it to an individual who was, as I recall a car salesman in a nearby suburb and known associate of Walker. Although I did not obtain any documentation, Mary was quite certain of this and with her known reputation for accuracty I decided I better not simply repeat speculation on the tag. ....for what its worth, Larry

John, I could contribute a couple of unpublished chapters on the purported relationship between Malcolm Wallace/LBJ and the Estes scandal murders. This may or may not be directly related to the JFK conspiracy but much of the primary source material on this is pretty hard to come by these days so for those interested it could clear up a lot of mininformation that is always floating around - and it is all sourced/footnoted. -- Larry

James, I'm shocked, implying that our buddy Dave might stretch the truth? Bend, break and tie in knots maybe but stretch... Your point on Martinez is well taken and from all the reports I've read it was common practice for he and Robertson to go in shore....after all, he was the expert coastal boat guide. On the other hand, certainly Bayo and others did not return with Pawley; interestingly enough Martino was even reporting some of them alive and well and needing exfiltration later that fall. All in all it's clear that it was in someone's best interest to make it look like they had remained and were most likely dead in Cuba. Whether that had anything to do with the JFK conspiracy when it happened in June I very much doubt. Actually Morales concluded that it was more likely they had been snookered into helping put a Bayo combat team into Cuba.....and given the weapons in the photos I'd say that may not have been a bad guess. Certainly the team was armed for far more than simply slipping in covertly and extracting a couple of Russian officers.... -- Larry

Tosh, Billings was actually the LIFE photographer who went on the Tilt mission with Bayo, Pawley, Martino et al. As far as the JMWAVE records go including Morales follow up reports, there was only one mission....which was supposed to get the Russians and from which supposedly no personnel ever returned - according to Morales. And there is no doubt that Morales was very much up the food chain, Chief Ops officer right under Shackley and with direct access to the SGA...he went back and forth to DC for briefings. In fact he behaved more like he was on the same level as Shackley and wore some other hats to it appears, some involving operations in Mexico. There were rumors that Bayo and others came back later - certainly their JMWAVE boat guide came back with the Tilt mission - but as far as Morales and the CIA summary report went at the time, Bayo and his team remained in Cuba, whereabouts unknown. -- Larry

James, Morales was definitely in charge of the Tilt mission support. He assigned the people and signed off on the supplies and even the deployment of the radar support mother ship. He also wrote the after action summary report representing JMWAVE. However Shackley signed off with Pawley on JMWAVE support for the project. For some time it appeared that Shackley was the "approving officer". Very recently however, we have obtained some rather amazing correspondance revealing that Marshall Carter gave written permission for Pawley to involve LIFE magazine, take their photo journalist and do photo coverage of the mission - including apparently giving LIFE first dibs on the coverage of the story if it succeeded or did not. I'm sure you can appreciate the number of security regs such an approval violated; not to mention it's potential impact on the Kennedy administration. We are still working on that aspect but as of now what we had once thought of as a somewhat small scale rogue mission clearly was far more than that. On the other hand it was definitely not cleared by the Cuban working group, nor on the Presidential approved mission list nor apparently known to RFK (if it had been Marshall Carter would have retired in pieces rather than going on over to the NSA). Much more to be learned here I think. -- Larry

James, one thing that is surely true in the article is Hemming's statement; he was an intelligence source for the CIA after his return and was even given a provisional security clearance. That was withdrawn but he did continue to provide information primarily passing it through the FBI who seems to have copied the CIA on most of it. That continued through the early 60's. As for Vidal, he had a preliminary CIA association at the time of his departure from Cuba but quickly became disenchanted with them, especially when they refused help in exfiltrating his brother. It's hard for me to see either of them knowingly cooperating with the CIA per se. On the other hand we are seeing more and more documents indicating that JMWAVE tried to manipulate and get info. on the most independent exile groups by feeding them funds through cut outs - in the end I would think it was always easy to claim support from the CIA when it was convenient - and on occasion it might have been true, at least as far as small amounts of money. But as far as the CIA was concerned that was seed money for collectiong intelligence, not for really serious operations. That's what I get from the JMWAVE ops documents at least. -- Larry