Larry Hancock

Interesting Ron; it's also interesting that one of the self admitted people in Dallas on November 22 - Roy Hargraves - was active the late 60's in a variety of anti-Panther activities in Los Angleles, including bombings of Black Panther offices. On the subject of Barnes, thanks largely to some great literature digging by Pat and due to the stimulus of this thread, readers of my upcoming second edition are going to see a lot more about Mr. Barnes, the Domestic Contact Service, Domestic Operations and chief of Domestic Operations Covert operations in 1963, Mr. Howard Hunt. Seems I had not given nearly enough credit to the position and capabilities of Mr. Barnes. Clearly Barnes was not the vague, mild mannered guy described to Evan Thomas for characterization in his book. -- Larry

I was born in 1947 in Oklahoma and attended Oklahoma State University and the University of New Mexico. After receiving a BA in History/Anthropology/Education, I served in the United States Air Force. After the Air Force I went on to work in a variety of communications oriented companies including Continental Telephone, Hayes Microcomputer and Zoom Technologies. I've worked in various areas of communications technology for 34 years and is currently Marketing Manager for Zoom Technologies of Boston. I've been involved in the study of cold war history and the Kennedy assassination for approximately 14 years, co-authoring "November Patriots", a docufiction novel and author and authoring "Someone Would Have Talked" a factual analysis of both the conspiracy and cover-up, published in November of 2003. http://www.jfklancer.com/catalog/hancock/index.html In addition I've ressearched and published several document collections dealing with the 112th Military Intelligence Group, Richard Case Nagell and his intelligence connections and the CIA segregated files. http://www.jfklancer.com/catalog/CDrom.html I have also contributed articles to both the Lancer Chronicles and to the journal of the UK research group, DPUK. I currently serve as speaker conference chair for the November In Dallas research conference hosted by JFK Lancer. http://www.jfklancer.com/dallas04/index.html

Thanks very much for the additional Barnes post Pat, I admire your library!! I'd sure like to know when in 1961 that meeting about an African cover company was but my guess would be later in the year perhaps when Barnes was making a transition to Domestic Ops but also getting other miscellaneous jobs. It would be most interesting if they had given him responsiblity for front companies both inside and outside the US. I'm particulary interested in the Freed book which sounds like it paints Barnes as an extreamist - that would be more in line with what Thomas says about him after the BOP and less like the even tempered, sort of vanilla guy that other books seem to describe. Even more interesting is the talk about domestic fronts and the FPCC... of course Oswald's FPCC front is almost a picture book combination of the sort of "false flag" operation so dearly loved by both Fitzgerald and used by him in SE Asia. The combination of Fitzgerald and Barnes running a flase flag operation against the FPCC using Oswald and functioning say as part of QKENCHANT under Domestic Operations would certainly explain all of Oswald's doings in New Orleans. However Barnes involvement in any project agaist an Iraq Col in 1960 when he was under Bissell on the Cuba Project is a real eye opener and does indeed suggest that Barnes may somehow have been operating much more directly with Harvey and ZRRIFLE than we have realized. Certainly their is nothing in Barnes 1960 job description at JMWAVE that would explain it. But we do know he let Harvey carry on the whole ZRRIFLE project while at JMWAVE so it may be that CIA managed to keep a whole lot from the Church Committee. One last note, I think we (well somebody) now knows all the paperwork on the removal of Oswald's name from the security index so we should probably be able to resolve whether it did come from Barnes or was strictly inside the FBI. If it came from Barnes that would be monumental but I think that may be too good to be true. -- Larry

There seems to be a problem with a 1961 meeting including Shackley as he had not served in SE Asia at that point, was coming off duty in Berlen as first Deputy of Operations and then COS at JMWAVE in Miami? He did not go to SE Asia and Laos until 1966. -- Larry

Thanks to the earlier dialog on Barnes, I've done a bit more homework and would encourage anyone interested in exploring Barnes activities following the Bay of Pigs and the activities of Domestic Operations in particular to post anything they turn up and to get in touch with me. I will be adding information on Barnes to my book including the following: He joined CIA in 1947 after working with Dulles during WWII on an abortive German early surrender project, he went on an extremely fast track to become Chief of Political and Psychological Staff during the Korean War and then served in Germany as COS in the same timeframe that Morales joined the CIA there. It seems very possible that Barnes became a sponsor for Morales and that might account for Morales own fast track both into PBSUCCESS where Barnes served in a key role as chief over Phillips, Hunt and Morales as well as Rip Robertson. It may also explain Morales move into JMWAVE when Barnes became ADP under Bissell, running many of the aspects of the Cuban Project. It appears that Barnes and Bissell were perhaps the only two in the Project with knowledge of the top secret assassination plans against Castro. In fact, a recent CIA study of the BOP IG report and Barnes aggressive response to it's criticism notes that Bissell and Barnes may have placed way to much confidence in Castro being assassinated; it also notes that Barnes was essentially in denial if not worse over the failure of the project, blaming it virutually all on JFK and the air support issue. Check it out at: http://www.cia.gov/csi/studies/winter98_99/art08.html Given Barnes senior agency position, his loss of status and move into the very mysterous Domestic Ops position in Feb 63 (with Hunt working for him) and his documented associations with Morales, Robertson and Phillips, I think further study of his activities in 1963 is well deserved. -- Larry

John, I only have Volume 1; he does mention Kilgalen's death but no mention of any associations or sources other than the Ruby interview. Nothing on Smathers or Smith. -- Larry

Excellant post and extremely thought provoking. Especially so because obviously Evan Thomas couldn't dig up much on what Domestic Operations really meant and because Domestic Operations were inherently against the CIA charter. The examples provided read much like David Phillips description of his role in Mexico City, which he significantly downplayed into a minor security staff position. The mere fact that Barnes wanted a US Station for operations says a lot. The question is how far CIA went down that road. We know they did go a long ways with Angleton's MKCHOS operation targeting the Viet Nam anti war effort. Perhaps that leveraged something Barnes had already put in place. Fighting perceied enemies (or perhaps dupes of foreign powers as they would be considered) at home would have been a fine duty for a US station. However there were serious domestic operations going on in the United States, they included both counter intelligence activities and operations against designated organizations seen to support US enemies - the project against the FPCC jumps to mind. Given a relationship between Phillips and Barnes and Veciana's observaton of someone looking like Oswald with Phillips in Dallas in the same time period as Oswald's trip to Mexico City the implications get significant. And certainly if resources were needed for a conspiracy against JFK where better to find them than among the secret proprietary companies and surplus assets that Barnes seems to have been assigned to manage. Barnes, Phillips, Robertson, (you have to add in Morales from the heros of Guatamala, he was in the Eisenhower visit as well) an operation against the FPCC, access to secret assets and proprietaries...and all parties carrying personal grudges and trauma from the BOP failure. Perhaps Barnes is a very important piece of the puzzle. And Domestic Operations, whatever it really did. -- Larry

John, Smith is known to me only through his Committee remarks, which became part of the right wing drumbeat about "giving away Cuba to the Communists" and were used to paint certain CIA and State Department officials as sympathetic to Castro and of course ultimately as possible closet Communists. The same round of accusations from certain old Cuban hands as had followed the remarks of the old China hands about China going Communist. These sorts of remarks seem to assume a life of their own and you find them repeaed in many places. Interestingly you find some of them very specifically placed in Martino's book where he talks about some of the same individuals being responsible for the rise of Castro that Smith mentions. It might be interesting to ask Mr. Weyl if those names, especially the CIA officer names came directly from John Martino or from other sources. Other than that I can't say that Mr. Smith or his wife were on my radar screen any more than a host of anti-Communist folks who shared the same view. And of course a strong anti-Communist view would not have been socially out of place in any association with JFK since he shared the same feelings about Castro. -- Larry

This discussion of Barnes and Kohly is very interesting and I would welcome any dialog from researchers who can tell me what Barnes was actually doing in 1963. Evan Thomas book has him as a major charactor but seems to drop him after the Bay of Pigs, we hear that his career was in trouble, he developed some medical problems related to that and possibly as a result of the stress of the BOP operation - and that he seems to have been very angry at JFK. But then Thomas seems to leave it. We need to know what Barnes job was in 63, who he reported to and who he was associating with. I've seen some reference to his role in a new Domestic Opeations group but with no detail - obviously that could be very interesting. In regard to Kohly and Morrow, Kohly's organization seems to have been very much out of the mainstream in 1963 and very "old line", not at all happy with many of the other exile leaders, no real military component and certainly not in special favor with the administration or part of the new Cuban project. I've seen some interesting letters in regard to Kohly and have always been curious as to exactly who picked him to be part of the counterfeit project - which certainly did occur but seems not to be found on the official map of Cuban projects being run under Fitzgerald or the Special Group/RFK? It would be really interesting if there was some sort of compartmentalized effort under Barnes. I've talked to some folks who were close to Morrow but although they are convinced that he was sincere in his belief about a conspiracy, beyond that it is very hard to separate truth from fiction (or perhaps speculation is a better word) where Morrow is concerned. The concensus seems to be that he did hear a very fundamental piece of rumor or gossip from somebody before the assassination but who - and why they would talk to him - is unclear. What is clear is that he felt it was more important to keep stirring the pot on the subject than to be accurate or factual in all he was writing; however it's also clear he did have an impact in the genesis of the HSCA. I have a hunch if we knew more about Barnes real job/activities things might become a good deal more clear. -- Larry

A definitive answer to that question is impossible to my view but we do have some directions e.g. JFK was much more enamored of the Special Forces concept than the CIA's covert operations and was in the progress of moving that sort of responsiblity back to the Army and the Joint Chiefs. He actually was always interested in the professional military view even though he had a low regard for some individual senior officers. There is good evidence to show that in his Cuban plans he was relying more on the Army than the CIA for any future operation against Cuba. Whether or not he would have taken the agency apart is questionable but I think it's safe to say that it's operations element would have moved back under the military. As to counter intelligence certainly he was not naive enough to know he needed someone to go head to head with the KGB and other intelligence sources like Cubas. Whether or not he would have left technical intelligence collection with CIA or trusted NSA with it all is a question. My personal view is that he would have taken CIA largely back to what it was set up to be in the first place - a central place to collect and analyze information - and present it. The Plans/Operations guys might well have ended up looking for jobs elsewhere. -- Larry looking for owrk

The first plot was to kill JFK. The second plot was to do it in a manner so as to patsy Oswald as an agent of Castro or directly influenced by Castro - provoking an American retaliation against Castro and most likely leading to in invasion of Cuba and a retun of the exiles in the U.S. -- Larry

Dale, I would urge some selectivity on using the word Mafia in this question. If you mean the "syndicate" of bosses that loosely controlled the various regional crime organizations the answer would be no. If you get more specific and say did any regional bosses ever participate in CIA projects it would be yes - you can find many details of Giancana and Trafficante's participation in the original Castro project in the Church Committee report. In that particular case the CIA probably didn't realize they were getting involved with Giancana and Trafficante per se as they set out to recurit somebody who could provide access to the old Havana gambling network contacts and picked Roselli - who on his own invited the two bosses to the meetings. Later, in the second round, William Harvey kicked them out of the project - which probably only meant they didn't attend any more meetings with CIA employees. Beyond that there is a clear pattern that individual CIA officers often turned to the use of local criminals to get things done off shore, for example we have records that CIA tried to use local criminals in Cuba to help blackmail or orthewise arrnange a break to get one of it's teams out of jail without the Cubans becoming aware of how high level the team was - it had been put in to try and bug or steal codes from the Chinese embassy in Havana. And later on over several decades there is solid evidence the CIA would often contact drug smugglers and gun smugglers and try to use them as intel assets or for other purposes - it got so bad in Latin America that DEA officially protested that as soon as they would give a contact list to CIA, CIA would go recruit them all - that was under William Shackley's tenure among others. -- Larry

Absolutely Ron and direct from my notes taken while hearing Doug present at a Lancer NID conference. As I recall the incident happened shortly after the SS representative was part of a briefing in which several agencies were given an introduction to the charger and process of the ARRB and instructed not to destroy anything further from that point. That's a generalization from memory. And by the way gives me the opportunity to say once again that Doug is one of my limited number of personal heros for his work on the ARRB and his strong sense of ethics! I only wish Doug had been running the show instead of a staff member...... -- Larry

Lee, actually one of the elements of the WC report was a study of SS protection and I think you will find extensive proposals for changes in procedures. If you had both pre and post versions of the guidelines I expect you would find the post much longer and very much different - the JFK assassination brought a great change in Presidential and even VP protection. One of the mistakes that can be easily made is to compare protection post 1963 with what was accepted practice at the time of Dallas. ...and I think that Driver section is a direct response to Greer's lack of training and preparation. Very timely comparison to the high level conclusions in the release of the 911 report today. I expect that you will find many sentences and paragraphs that would be interchangeable with Presidential protection circa 1963. -- Larry

Steve, I've heard of Stringfellow in general but the only DPD name I see associated with intel SPOT reports out of Dallas is DPD Captain Dowdy. By the weekend, Lt. Col. Boyd of the Dallas 112th office had been assigned to be on site with DPD to get reports directly; he was Deputy Commander of Region II which included Dallas. His superior in Dallas was Lt. Col. Roy Pate. Either Pate or Boyd would have been the correct people to have questioned about what the 112th was doing in Dallas on Nov. 22, not Jones who is listed as S2 Intelligence Officer. The other candidates would have been Lt. Col Stanley Greer who was actually the Operations officer or his boss the Group Commander Col. Williard Mize; both located at 112th headquarters in San Antonio. .....Larry

On the two questions about the Texas Trip, that's is a very long and involved story - essentially starting several months earlier when the President made a trip to west Texas and met with Johnson and others, discussion began at that time of the need for a major political visit to the state as part of the ramp up for the election campaign. Over the next several months the trip grew from first being a visit to NASA in Houston to expand to other cities and speaking engagements as well as a major reception by the Gov. and a night at the Johnson Ranch. The remark about Fort Worth and Dallas is not very suspicious though, the two cities are very close, long time rivals and it would have been terrible politics to visit one and not the other. The Johnson camp afterwards tried to portray the whole trip as being one desired by the Kennedy staff to raise money but that is simply not true and in general the Kennedy staff was not happy about the trip and felt forced into it in order to try to pull the factions of the Texas Democratic party back together before the campaign begin. Cliff Carter does a fine job of offering disinformation about the trip in his oral history at the Johnson library, not even being willing to discuss any serious fraction in the state party politics. As to the Limo, yes JFK always used an open limo for visiblity whenever possible, even on international trips. -- Larry

To follow up on a point by Ron, there were a couple of very unusual things about he motorcade which can be traced in a direction other than the Secret Service. Ron's point about the Press Truck is extremely important because most political motorcades - which this was - are for the purpose of generating not only exposure but media coverage. Which is why an open truck with ample room for extensive press photography is a fixture of most motorcades. Although I have not studied this from a comparative standpoint (somebody should) my gut feel is also that the Dallas motorcade also uniquely placed JFK way to close to the front of the motorcade. And thirdly, it is now documented that at least two cycles were stripped off the flanks of the Limo at Love field....under instructions of someone who seemed to be associated with the Vice President's security detail. The reason I bring this up is that the selection of vehicles, positioning and even who rode who where were coordinaed by Jack Puterbaugh who was acting as DNC advance man and who was coordinating with Cliff Carter - Johnson's key aide and the man who in his Johnson library oral history states that he observed a SS man with an automatic wepon look up to the TSBD and prepare to fire back - he just couldn't acquire his target in time.... which of course is easy to show as untrue from DP photographs. -- just to introduce the thought that there may have been more subtle maneuvering in play on Nov. 22 -- Larry

Paul, actually Jones was not the Operations Officer on Nov. 22, he was G2 - as can be demonstrated by the message traffic that went through him and his own messages to the FBI as well as the organization chart which the ARRB obtained. The ARRB investigated the issues of the so called stand down, the action of the 112th and Jones remarks about the possiblity of it being one of his officers who showed the ID behind the fence. I encourage you to read their extensive investigation and reports which I have published via Lancer on CD. One of the things that they were rather put off by is that several of the things Jones said can simply be shown to be untrue - and they corroborated this by interviews with several 112th Dallas personnel. In fact their own internal memos show that they were left with the question of whether Jones was simply talking off the top of his head, was for some reason making up information or was simply unreliable. After considerable study I can't answer that any more than they could but I can affirm to you that Jones is a terrible source and the only net effect was that his testimony managed to divert the investigation of the people with ID - a very serious issue. If I knew who actually selected Jones and brought him to the Committees, rather than the actual Commanders of the Dallas office of the 112th and the actual Unit Commander - whose names are well documented in the 112th unit history - I might have an opinion but at the moment it could either have been a mistake, or something else. -- Larry

Steve, I didn't do the interview myself but I think I have documented it in print somewhere - I would be less than honest if I could tell you where that was off the top of my head. I think I've been writing on this too long...and at this point I can't even recall who briefed me on the interview, could be one of two or three folks I was working with about 4-5 years ago...sigh. It may very possibly be in the article I did to go with the documents on the 112th CD, I should have put it there. In any event, the best I can do from memory is tell you that one of the DPD officers in the car was good friends with the reserve officer and told him he had a great position in the motorcade - apparently his friend asked if he could get in. The DPD officer actually took his friend to the DPD morning briefing and from there to the airport to meet the President and then just slid him into the car as if he was assigned to be there. These days that sort of thing would be laugable (well maybe) but as you know Puterbaugh was introduced at the airport variously as a White House Aide and/or somebody from the DNC and nobody questioned either. My impression is that the fellow just gracefully eased away at the hospital, knowing full well he wasn't really supposed to be there and certainly not wanting to make a big issue for his buddy at that point in time as to why he was. -- Larry

Steve, I'm sorry for the confusion, the reason I picked the term "point" car was to try and differentiate it from the "lead" car which you are describing. Call it the "scout" car if you like but it drove the route a considerable way in front of the motorcade... something like 45 minutes. It was driven by a single traffic officer whose main focus was checking the positioning of assigned traffic officers in intersections and the blocking of designated streets, ramps etc. This is a further illustration of the fact that in 1963 things like traffic, crowd control and at the very worst, demonstrations, were the things that were on the mind of the DPD and to a large extent even the SS. A lot of the things we automatically think about in our far more security challenged age just were not on the radar screen at the time. Read the days DPD brief and you get a sense of what their priorities were. Today we would have trained security personnel doing a threat evaluation on the route - in 1963 a stalled pick up under the railroad bridge was something to get out of the way, not a potential car bomb - in terms of police experience. As to the "Lead" car, again in those times the lead car was just that, it lead the motorcade and Greer followed it. In his testimony he describes that as his job, he didn't review maps in advance, didn't drive the route himself to prepare for the next day - he followed the lead car assigned to lead the motorcade. And the lead car was focused on the motorcade as a logistics device and to support the motorcade as part of the days PR agenda - Puterbaugh actually fits there because he had the responsiblity for organizing the motorcade, designating what people went in which car and what sequence the vehicles were in. The ead car was not really about serious security, it was way to close to the President to do much in that regard, to close to even successfully abort or stop the cars behind it in time to avoid something bad, especially the JFK so far up front - and the reserve MI officer in it was not from the 112th, he has been interviewed and was simply there for personal reasons to get a ride in the President's motorcade. He was worked into the car by one of the officers who was his friend. -- Larry

Lee, I suggest you obtain the ARRB interview with Col. Prouty and review his remarks to them on the subject of his actual knowledge of SS procedures and of security preparations - I think you will find a considerable varience in his interview with them, a lengthy voluntary interview on his part actually. It's part of the CD collection I published on the 112th MI. -- Larry

One of the reasons that it's so difficult to give a pure yes or no answer to that question is that as far as I know nobody had ever produced a copy of an actual SS procedures handbook from 1963 - understadably at the time nobody was eager to do that for security reasons and afterwards their procedures had changed considerably. However to be a little more realistic about matters, even if the guideline had called for that, the SS was faced with a trip which put the President in five cities over a three day period with major social events and public speeches at multiple locations plus motorcades of some sorts in each city. Given the size of the SS at the time they would have literally had to organize a huge mobilization most likely involving military units to accomplish that - not a thing JFK would have encouraged I expect. In Dallas specifically, major preparation and personnel went into security efforts at the trade center where they expected militant and aggressive protestors on the model of the Stevenson visit. Because of expected demonstrations of the Chief of Police even went on TV and a special new city ordinace was passed related to public meetings and demonstrations, the Chief actually called on all citizens to help ensure that demonstrations did not get out of control. Bottom line, you can find locations where buildings were checked on the Texas trip and where there were officers on buildings (Fort Worth for example) but sadly the SS and police were preparing for demonstrations and for traffic problems (the daily briefing conducted by DPD for officers focused on traffic and the point car for the motorcade was actually driven by a traffic officer). As the HSCA said, they simply were not prepared for a long distance attack on the President. On a side note even if the handbook called for something different, there is ample evidence to show that even known rules such as not staying out late and drinking (as applied to next day duty personnel) was routinely violated - including in the early morning hours before the assassination. -- Larry

Dale, that remains a hotly debated question even today, as much so as at the conclusion of the work of the House Intelligence/Church Committee hearings a couple of decades ago. Bottom line is that you will not find any memoranda or documents showing that JFK gave specific instructions or was made aware of specific plans to murder Castro. On the other hand you will find numerous discussions of the need to eliminate Castro or remove Castro from power - one of the problems is that with Presidential deniability as a guideline, the CIA is then allowed to interpretate for themselves what that means and preserve the reputation of the President. One interesting memo shows that even in high level staff meetings the subject of assassination was taboo and memos were written over the stupidity of even discussing such a thing conceptually. When RFK was briefed on a mob connected project to murder Castro he commented on the stupidity of using organized crime and how that would make it impossible to prosecute certain people. He ordered that he be briefed if that were ever considered again (he was not told that the project had been reactivated) however there is no sign that he was outraged by the concept of assassination per an se. I think the bottom line is that we have extensively documented proof that JFK was pursuing two tracks at the time of his death. One tracked involved reaching an agreement with Castro to get the Russians out, put Castro back in a neutral position and reopen relations. The other track involved sponsoring a coup against Castro, backing an exile force to support that coup and a contingency plan to involve US forces subsequent to that - obviously this track would have involved the overthrow and death of Castro one way or the other. Beyond that I think you will find the question purposefully blurred due to the practice of deniability which which basically leaves the CIA with the onus of doing things the President may want done - without his being tied directly to the deed..... the ethics of that are perhaps even more important than the question of whether JFK himself personally ordered someone to go out and murder Fidel and Raul. There is also no doubt such orders were given inside the CIA, multiple times. -- Larry

The November in Dallas Conference will be held November 18-21 this year. As Conference Chair I'd like to encourage researchers to consider submitting proposals for papers for presentation at the conference. Guidelines for Papers and a link for submission are at: http://www.jfklancer.com/dallas04/call.html Papers need to be in a normal academic format with both primary and secondary sources indentified and should be capable in being presented in a 30 minute to hour long time frame including time for a question and answer period. If anyone has questions please feel free to email me directly. -- thank you, Larry

Hi, I'm Larry Hancock and I live in in Oklahoma in the United States. I'm a graduate of the University of New Mexico, served in the United States Air Force and went on to work in a variety of communications oriented companies including Continental Telephone, Hayes Microcomputer and Zoom Technologies. I'm currently Marketing Manager for Zoom Technologies of Boston. I've been involved in the study of cold war history and the Kennedy assassination for approximately 14 years and am co-author of November Patriots, a docufiction novel and author of "Someone Would Have Talked" a factual analysis of both the conspiracy and cover-up, published in November of 2003; details at: http://www.jfklancer.com/catalog/hancock/index.html In addition I've researched and published several document collections dealing with the 112th Military Intelligence Group, Richard Case Nagell and his intelligence connections and the CIA segregated files: http://www.jfklancer.com/catalog/CDrom.html I've been a contributor to the JFK Lancer Chronicles and to the journal of the UK research group; DPUK, have won two Mary Ferrell research awards and most recently served as Conference Chair for the 2003 November in Dallas Conference: http://www.jfklancer.com/Dallas03.html