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Posts posted by Larry Hancock
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Hi everyone, we are close to completing our schedule of speakers and
topics for the conference. The following is the basic information:
November In Dallas 04 sponsored by JFK Lancer
Dates November 18-21
Location: Crown Plaza Market Center; 7050 Stemmons Freeway
The conference will include:
* presentations of new research
* sessions with witnesses James Teague and Aubrey Rike
* sessions on research including research at NARA and the Mary Ferrell Foundation
* a screening of Mark Sobel's new film on the Warren Commission
* overview and discussion of the JFK Grand Jury initiative
* an update on the RFK murder and Sirhan Sirhan legal battle
* a guided walking tour of Dealey Plaza
* optional bus tours of assassination associated locations in Dallas
* a JFK remembrance ceremony at the pergola in the plaza
A preliminary list of speakers includes the following presenters
Speakers*:
Rex Bradford / The JFK coffin mystery
Colin McSween / The Parkland Doctors Hospital medical reports
Bill Kelley / The Grand Jury initiative
Lamar Waldron / The Myth of the Kennedy Missile crisis compromise
Carol Hewitt / Lee Oswald and the Paines
Barbara LaMonica
Lawrence Teeter / Sirhan Sirhan and the RFK murder
Stuart Wexler / Research at NARA post ARRB
Tom Pinkston / New research on NAAA and the bullet fragments
Robert Chapman / The Mary Ferrell Foundation
William Law / Bethesda Autopsy Witnesses
Michael Cain / Richard Cain; the Castro and Kennedy assassinations
Hal Verb / JFK Assassination myths
Larry Hancock / The Kirknewton mystery, a pre-assassination conspiracy leak
Mark Sobel / The Warren Commission
Joe Biles / The Waggoner Carr papers
James Teague / Witness to the assassination
Aubrey Rike / Parkland witness
*List will be updated as confirmed. Keep checking the JFK Lancer website for topic and bio updates.
Further conference details and registration information may be found at:
http://www.jfklancer.com/dallas04/hotel.html
Interested parties are invited to contact me with questions at larryjoe@westok.net
-- Larry
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Thank you Tosh, I will indeed look into the Army units you named and
look forward to details on Dallas when you have a chance to organize it.
By the way, on the Tracy Barns reference....I'm assuming that is just a name
coincidence and not the Tracy Barnes of CIA fame, or is it?
-- thanks again, Larry
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Tosh, is it possible for you to name some or all of your sources in regard
to the detailed warnings in Dallas and of the foreknowledge that you
described?
Also, could you help us understand a bit more about the MI chain of command
you were under. I am familiar with the Regional MI groups such as the 111th,
112th etc, of intel attached to commands such as Strike command but I have
never seen any sign of MI supporting JMWAVE - in fact to some extent I've
seen evidence of them acting independently and contrary to WAVE, an
example would be their contacts with Alpha 66.
It would be really helpful if you could give more detail on your MI connection and
of course if there were any names or command structure that you could
flesh out in regard to that subject or specifically in regard to the orders for the abort team mission.
-- thank you, Larry
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Tosh, as I recall from a posting you made on the Lancer forum, you
understood that the CIA, the FBI (but not necessarily the Secret Service?),
the Joint Chiefs, RFK and JFK were all aware of a plot to attack JFK
in Dallas. In addition, their information was specific enough to place
the attack in the vacinity of the Adolphus hotel but that an update on local
intelligence in the Dallas vacinity led them to know that it was actually
going to be in the Plaza.
This would of course suggest that virtually everyone at the highest levels
of government knew in advance of an active threat and of course knew
aferwards that there had been a conspiracy - and in fact had specific intel
leads into that conspiracy.
In regard to the abort team, that suggests that all these folks were pretty
much relying on a group that was flown in at the last minute from several
states away to counter this threat and that they consciously did not
prepare any sort of abort mechanism to divert the motorcade from DP
in the event that the attackers could not be spotted or diverted at the last
minute - in fact your abort team members were on their own
and not in direct communications in DP. And they intentionally did not brief
the SS contingent or lay on any special SS or Police or other security other
than the abort team deployment.
Those post left a real impression on me so I'm pretty sure I'm remembering
the gist of it correctly, I think I even remarked to Chris Cox at the time
that it seemed like more detail on the matter than I had seen from you before. Obviously there are huge implications to those remarks and it seems to me it cuts to the chase in regard to your observations on the attack on the President so I thought I should bring it up for your comment here...
-- Larry
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John, there are a great many things in the Johnson tapes over a period of several months that are extremely relevant to the cover-up - I covered as much as possible in my book from the material I had available but I certainly do not have complete transcripts for the period nor have I listened to the tapes myself.
To your question though, first to my knowledge there are no "missing" tapes for the period - there is at least one sign of an attempt to erase content on a Johnson library tape; Rex Jackson covers that in a paper he presents on his history matters site (in that case a small part of a tape appears to be erased however the transcript gives the clue)....that is a conversation dealing with Mexico City.
On the larger question though, I doubt that Johnson ever gave any thought of the tapes being out of his control or released to the public during his life time without his approval. He kept the system to provide background for future historical treatment of his Presidency. Until Watergate, I doubt any President gave any thought to the tapes being used against them in any fashion, much less being released in totality to the public.
The tapes are another fine area of primary research work that could be done by JFK researchers though; I know of nobody with conspiracy interest who is working them directly. There has been some controversy as to the quality of some of the transcription work done to date to produce the transcripts we do have.
-- Larry
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Hello Vaughn, having devoted many years to researching RCN and immersing myself in his extensive correspondance and documents I'd weigh in with the opinion that we are unlikely to find anything like an CIA employment file or even contact report on Nagell. A number of new documents have emerged in the last several years though, Dick Ruseell covers virtually all of the new information in the second edition of his book which was released last year.
While we have no smoking gun, we have some strong indicatior e.g.
1) A State Department document relating to an embassy visit from Nagell in Europe remarking that he was carrying the correct card demonstrating at least an association with the CIA during his visit there.
2) A letter from CIA to FBI acknowledging that approximately 8 names in his notebook were actual CIA employees, several of them in the LA office and at least one in DC
3) Confirmation that individuals Nagell described in Mexico City were indeed CIA associated, particularly confirmation from a CIA employee on the female (Maria del Carmine if memory serves).
4) Mexico City embassy documents relating to Nagell's appearances and statements to the embassy staff in MC describing his rejection of citizenship and a threat to sell secrets to foreign powers - the paperwork on this shows a total lack of the CC's and other follow-up that should have occured following such a visit; the security staff either dropped the ball entirely or somebody at some level knew it was a security test.
In addition to that we have a lot of new information emerging which demonstrates how very active FBI, CIA and even Army Intelligence was in monitoring the FPCC, all travel to and from Cuba - including several projects targeting the FPCC and FPCC penetration agents in 1963. This fits very well with the FPCC oriented evidence recovered from Nagell's car trunk upon his arrest - however not all that has ever surfaced and even one of the key pages listing evidence recovered is missing from the primary arrest documents.
-- Larry
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John, no I didn't interview Mr. Marlowe myself - all I know about him is from
Dick Russell's work.
However I have been doing a good deal more research on FPCC members in general, their travel to Cuba and the intense scruntiny given to the FPCC by Army Intel, the FBI and the CIA. Especially the joint CIA and FBI projects. Based on this I can definitely say that his association with the FPCC and his travel to Cuba made him a primary intelligence target for a number of agencies.
As one example, the regional Army MI groups were maintaining lists on all US citizens traveling to Cuba and supplying them to the CIA. As another example, CIA was suing FBI assets with CPUSA and FPCC memberships as intelligence assets under a program with the crypt AMSANTA.
-- Larry
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John, check page 120 of the book for some elaboration on the Committee; I think Gordon Winslow may have a copy of it's membership list on his site. In any event I have seen such a list circa 1963. The organization was primarily a media/PR vehicle - if Martino was a member it might have been because he was serving in a speaking role against Castro's regime.
Members did include Pawley, Luce, Hal Hendrix, Virginia Prewett (one of Bishop/Phillip's cut outs to Veciana as you will recall from the book and a constant media outlet for Phillips) and Ernest Cuneo of the North American Newspaper Outlets....the NANO was quite clearly an Agency media outlet (knowingly or not).
I don't think you will find anything particularly conspiratorial about these folks, most were simply rabid anti-Communists and actively publishing and speaking against Castro. They were a convenient outlet for the media outreach which was one of Phillip's specialties.
-- Larry
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James, that is an extremely interesting photo as their are no dispatch calls nor other indications that DPD did anything at the local airports. The only exception is a mysterious radio call to the dispatcher later in the afternoon about "men with guns" being detained at a hanger at Love field. Up to now that has been a total mystery including whether or not a unit was there or whether it is a telephone report etc? There seems to be no other radio traffic in response.
It appears to me that those may be flight crew, especially the one in the slicker.
The officer at Red Bird was off duty which would raise the question of whether or not he would have been in uniform..... and of course the big question is who took the photo.
Congratulations on a true mystery photo! Larry
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John, as a little bit more background on Phillips and Veciana, the following is from the upcoming fourth version of my updated errata and news on the book:
Page 114 New information suggests that Phillips would not have had to identify
Veciana as contact on his own. In early 1960, Veciana had approached the CIA (contact crypt Olien) with a proposal for a plot to “wipe out” Prime Minister Castro and his top aides. The memo disclosing this information also references that Viciana worked for Julian Lobo’s bank and we now know that Lobo, his New York connections and his contact to Alberto Fernandez and Unidad were all key connections for the CIA into the early counter-revolutionary activities against Castro. This information suggests that Phillips may have been targeted on Veciana. (Reference RIF 104-10315-10038, Havana to JMWAVE, subject “Viciana Report on plot to wipe out Cuban PM and Top Aids).
-- Larry
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Yes, there were people in the Archives the following Monday after this was discussed widely online. The archivists had been previously contacted and'were already searching for the document.
The net result is that the RIF number thought to be associated with the document
in question does not relate to it, it has to do with something totally different. After several weeks of searching there appears to be no such document in the Treasury file series that relates to the internal document number series present on the first page of the memo. Althought it is impossible to say that the document is not at NARA or was ever transferred there, we can say that it was not recently located there nor is there anything that veriefies that it is there.
The initial source seems to have been a mysterious FBI man who gave a paper copy to a JFK conspiracy writer quite a while ago, the contents were described in a tabloid article and also in Dick Russell's first edition of The Man Who Knew Too Much back in the early 90's.
At this point it seems unlikely we will ever know the true source and circumstances under which it originated but it is unlikely that it will ever be traced back and verified as an official document in the Treasury Department Headquarters files or a document that can be shown to be in the NARA
collection.
-- Larry
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Gary, almost immediately after the assassination Richard went to the local Chicago FBI office with information he requested they share with the CIA. He became very frustrated because they refused to do anything with it.
His information was the Oswald had come to Chicago in early 1963 to meet with a chapter of the FPCC there which had fallen under control of Chinese Communist followers. While in Chicago Oswald obtained the rifle used in the assassination.
This was a pretty interesting spin among the small group of people who were going to the FBI with Communist sponsorship stories. It is also what appears to have started the JFK myth that Richard Cain was involved in locating where Oswald obtained the rifle used in the shooting.
-- Larry
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Greg, I'm pretty sure the call was longer than that, three or four minutes
at a minimum. Also there is some other commentary somewhere on that
call, perhaps in his polygraphy test but certainly somewhere in which he
expounds a bit more and says that one of the reasons for the call was that he was thinking of sending Gruber one of his dogs.
Also:
He happened to come through a couple of nights prior to that to try to interest me, or 4 or 5 days prior to that, to interest me in a new kind--you follow the story as I tell it?
Chief Justice WARREN. Yes.
Mr. RUBY. It is important, very important
....once again he telegraphs to Warren that this call to Gruber is "important,
very important" yet covers it up with reference to a new machine for a waxxxxeria.
Somehow it seems a little strange to be telling a Chief Justice during an investigation of the murder of a President that a new device for a waxxxxeria is "very, very important." Actually I don't think they were following Ruby's real
story very well at all.
-- Larry
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It seems clear that Jack and his brother both knew Mike Shore and that the connection was not one that anybody wanted to discuss (Irwin Weiner being an excellant example). The following is from a quick google search:
"Mike Shore, a Californian involved in the entertainment field (2267) also attended school with Weiner and Earl Ruby,(2268) and he and Weiner had been involved in a number of business transactions. (2269) Jack Ruby also called Shore numerous times in 1963 to seek help with his labor problems,(2270) including calls in the days before and after the October 26 call to Weiner. Weiner stated that Shore never mentioned to him the calls from Ruby.(2271) Shore may have prompted Ruby's call to Weiner, however, by mentioning the latter's name in one of' his 1963 telephone conversations with Ruby. "Ruby asked if he should call Weiner about the trouble he was havingwith AGVA but Shore replied, 'What can he do ?.' Shore did not know if Ruby did call Weiner."(2272) (Earl Ruby worked with Shore following the Oswald shooting to raise defense funds and to secure an attorney.)(2273)"(a)
Seems like Shore might be a good candidate for an introduction to Jack Ruby for Dorothy...we need to know more about his entertainment activities.
(a) courtesy of none other than McAdams' WEB site....grin, Larry
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Greg, on a side note, Belli's law partner has described receiving a call from the Desert Inn, from a fellow he had known in Havana, right after Ruby shot Oswald. The call was for Belli and the caller wanted him to defend Ruby but under the condition that all payments would be represeted as coming from Ruby's brother.
The caller was most likely Roselli. Hinckle and Turner identify Gruber as having associated with Roselli in L.A. Peter Dale Scott identifies Grumer as a long time associate of Cohen.
Also, on November 12th, Ruby phoned Candy Barr and talked to her for 14 min. She had been Cohen's favorite girl for awhile and there is good reason to supposed Cohen and several L.A. folks knew of Ruby through her, Ruby tried to intervene when she was sent up for drugs. There was supposed to be a dynamite book on her a couple of years ago but supposedly it got pulled before publication.
I suggest somebody check Ruby's testimony on the Gruber call about this because I'm virtually certain he says he called Gruber about his media or film connections and that might indeed give a tie -- and that is something Kilgalen might have dug up and used as an introduction. Hck, Jack may have still had an idea he might end up in a book himself...hers.
-- Larry
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Folks, this is a stretch but was Gruber a friend of Mike Shore?
I seem to recall that Ruby's alibi for calling Gruber immiediately after the assasination was that he wanted to get some connections which might help him promote a story/book/movie about the assassination - well that and that he was discussing sending one of his dogs to Gruber (not likely).
I think this is in Seth Kantor's book ....or something similar at least.
-- Larry
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Greg, Rose gave the ships name phonetically as "Mary Etta", the ship
found to match the port and time was the SS Maturata, British registry
docking in Galveston.
The seaman's name was given as "Luther", initials L.J. last name unknown.
Delivery was to be made to Leo Parker (alias), true name Poreurillo (the
spelling is hard to read on this, poor type quality or altered, hard to say
on my copy). Parker was to take delivery in Dallas. Other names
given were Pete Vallone and the Tamborrello family. Police records were
checked and confirmed that the Vallone and Tamborello families
were heavily invovled in narcotics, white slavery and other criminal activity.
Given the number of details which appeared to check out it is rather significant that the investigation was dropped simply because Rose had a record with the Houston police and they apparently told the agents that her allegations were untrue. Which is very strange given her actual record which clearly demonstrates that she had been very active as both a prostitute (white slavery) and a drug courier and there is no detail given as to how they could have checked her
story prior to the arrival of the ship?
Fruge himself said that he and the agents did verify a Luther on the ship but failed
to intercept him and were ordered back given the decision by higher level
customs officers to drop it based - it seems - simply on a lack of interest by Houston police.
-- Larry
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Pat, that looks like great legwork and a fine analysis to me. And logically, if a new Domestic Operations Division is being established logically (and from an internal politics standpoint) Domestic Contacts would seem like something that would almost have to go into it unless it had a real power based to keep itself separate and there is little sign of that.
In fact it is so logical that it seems all the effort to make DCS and DOD mysterious is even worse than normal CIA internal security. Certainly it could be explained if their had been a paper trail or even personnel within that organization who had contact with Oswald in 1963. It might be worth taking another look at the documents in Newman's book to see if DCS or DOD is ever referenced on the distribution list for any Oswald documents. Doubtful though, if anything that would probably have been in his "soft file" which the CIA managed to keep hidden during all the investigations and when identified by the ARRB and requested, was still never provided as far as I know. Probably with good reason if it had been in Barnes' file cabinent...grin.
-- Larry
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Greg, not that it solves anything, but a couple of observations...
First, in Col. Jones interview he makes it clear that the 112th records do not
list Hidel as an actual alias for Oswald. There is discussion that the files
contain information that Lee Oswald was in possession of an FPCC membership
card signed by A.J. Hidell and of a statement made by Oswald to the FBI that
Hidel had recruited Oswald in August asking him to distruibute literature.
...which I suppose explains why Oswald was not immediately felt to
be using an alias in New Orleans, as I recall Hosty goes into length on this
point in his book developing why it took the New Orelans agents some two
months or so to come to the conclusion that there was no real AJ Hidell and that it the FPCC in N.O. was a one man game.
Jones goes on to say that on Nov. 22 he received information from Dallas that an individual had been arrested carrying identification with both the names A.J. Hidell (Selective Service Card) and Oswald. Jones seemed proud of the fact that a quick check of their files allowed him to reply to Dallas that the individual was Lee Oswald and that the name Hidell had been used before in association with Oswald. It's pretty apparent that he feels he figured out Hidell was Oswald - which does make him considerably faster than the FBI in New Orleans. It is sort of humorus that in his testimony, Jones still qualifies though ans says that "I am of the opinion that A.J. Hidell and Lee Harvey Oswald are one and the same"....because he is being questioned on whether it was at all possible there was a real A.J. Hidell.
-- Larry
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I'll try to reply to both Bill and James with this post.
Bill, the sessions on Rose would be available in the Lancer video
tapes of last years conference which may be found via
www.jfklancer.com
James, yes those are the ID's made by Garrison's investigators but I have
seen a memo from him that expresses his concern that his investigators may
have been pushing too hard for the ID's. There is nothing to connect the
two men at all although there is a rough connection between Santana and some of the other pre-assassination gossip, primarily because he had indeed served as a JMWAVE boat guide and taken in at least one mission in 1963 - he also seems to have had some connections to some smugglers or other criminals of some sort during that time frame and as I recall he did have an arrest record.
Other than that about the only thing you can say is that Arcacha Smith had been in Florida, Tampa area in early 63 and moved back to Texas taking a job
in Houston and then doing some business in Dallas I think. However his boss was interviewed and accounted for his presence during the time of the incident with Rose....if that can be trusted.
All in all it seems to me very possible that Rose heard some of the general gossip that was very prevalent in Florida, Chicago and even in Dallas - byond that it seems hard to take it anywhere concrete. Certainly there were a number of folks making remarks about a general threat against JFK in November.
-- Larry
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Bill, we have a couple of presentations of new material on Rose at the 2003
November in Dallas conference. Jim Olivier presented on two new
witnesses including another La. police officer that had been involved with
her arrests and who Fruge talked to in regard to this incident as well as a
police secretary who was familiar with the November arrest and had also done
some interview work in Clinton on the Oswald appearance there.
Bob Dorff presented information including his interview with one of the
Doctors who worked at the hospital and this clarified who was on duty and who
had talked with her.
I've just been reading a new Customs document on the trip Fruge made down
with her to intercept the drug smuggling courier on the ship and she
certainly did have the correct information about the ship and the crewman.
It's very unclear why they decided to drop the whole thing but the excuse
given was that because of her past history they did not consider her a viable
informant although in this particular instance three different sources are cited
as saying her preliminary information all checked out.
Certainly everything in the new information presented seems to corroborate
the basic story in terms of whatever rumor or gossip she had heard....unfortunately none of it can take us much further given that the matter was simply not pursued prior to her death.
-- Larry
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John, this weekend the host which operated the server for the Lancer forum
suffered a total disk crash on their primary server.
Debra will have to find a new host company and it will take some time to
move across the forum software and load the backup messages. Due to
the nature of the disk crash the last backup may have been lost - an effort
is being made to obtain the actual disk and recover some of it but that is
problematic. If so posts will be restored to the previous backup in May.
It will likely be one to two weeks at best before the forum could be operational again.
I should point out that the JFK Lancer WEB site is still fully operational and tha is where the actual Lancer research resoure files and documents reside. They are safe and remain available as one of the main data sources on the WEB. It is strictly the online forum which was affected by the disk crash....and the need to move to another host company.
In the interim I would encourage folks to investigate the resources available at the main Lancer site.
-- Larry
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Pat, a comment on your rhetorical question:
"It remains to be seen whether the CIA EVER really believed their stated plan would work. Does the IG report go into this? I'm gonna try and find out."
It strikes me that the first IG report essentially concluded that the CIA did not
have the expertise to run a large scale military operation....which the Zapata
project turned out to be.....and the first report highlighted all sorts of issues
with the command structure, decision making and logistics. Barnes reply to
all of that was basically that it was nit picking and they got the Brigade
organized, transported, supplied and on the beach (well off shore at least) and
the plan only failed due to the lack of air superiority which had been an
assumption. Basically his out was that they may not have done a neat job but
it would have worked if JFK had not abandoned them. A more recent CIA
analysis of the BOP raises two major issues. The first is that there was no
real plan beyond getting the troops on the beach, no options, no fall back etc.
Of course it's pretty clear that Barnes and Bissell expected to get the troops
on the beach, supplied for a few days, declare a new government and then get
full scale US military commitment....or force JFK into it. And they expected
Castro to be dead. This second major issue raised is that Barnes and Bissell assumed way to much in regard to Castro's assassination when they really had no direct involvement with that activity nor really any way to know how well it was or was not going.
I know some people assume that the whole project was set up to fail because nobody could be as inept and overconfident as Barnes and Bissell seem to have been. Personally I tend to go along with the more recent CIA analysis which states that Barnes was uniquely qualified to know plan adequately based on the Guatamala project - but that he simply failed miserably. Possibly because the Cuba Project grew into something much larger and much more military than anything in his experience. And I can't help but feel that it also represented a hughe amount of wishful thinking on the part of the CIA who totally mis-evaluated the depth and breadth of actual popular support for Castro after the revolution. Of course given how poorly it managed to coordinate with in country exile factions like Unidad (and how CIA miscues literally allowed Castro to roll them all up immediately before the invastion) perhaps it was as much a failure of execution as of evaluation?
Bottom line, it just flat looks like an all around failure to me. Larry
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Boy that's a long list John, and overall it seems to suggest there were a couple of sore spots RFK was still interested in covering up in terms of his brother's image.
1) There is no doubt that their was discussion of ways in which both Diem and Truijillo would be ousted. There is no good evidence that assassination was discussed at the level of JFK; however it is clear that the CIA was involved in both ousters and that Barnes in particular was backing armed attacks on Trujillo. JFK was very upset over Diems death. As to Johnson, he came up with several candidates for a conspiracy which killed JFK, Diem's associates were first and he later seemed to focus on Castro.
2) Of course there was discussion of dumping Johnson, that's politics. However it would have taken something truly explosive to force out a sitting VP from the ticket, of course LBJ's scandals made that an ongoing possiblity.
3) I would say that's pretty historically correct. Now if RFK had known about a good deal of other similar activities out of JMWAVE in 1963 - Harvey would have had plenty of company as he packed.
4) That is simply false, we know he was told of the initial Roselli plots and it's pretty clear that he knew the exiles he was backing in 1963 had eliminating Castro as one of the action items in their planned coup.
5) I've seen names offered for some of the officers but don't recall specifics, some may have been military advisors not CIA per se. I think Lynch even mentions this subject in his book.
6) He's got it right there, more and more evidence is surfacting for CIA officer actions that directly opposed Administration policy and directives. The new JMWAVE operations reports are a good source on that for Cuba.
7) I don't know of anyone who has really gone into this area in detail other than as it pertains to Cuba, something might be done by digging into State Department history documents. It's pretty clear that keeping it from CIA was virtually impossible.
8) The Viet Nam stance seems totally bogus to me and I'm not sure why he would say that at all?
9) I'd say that was a very accurate statement on the Johnson scandals; they were pure Johnson, nothing to do with the Administration per se.
David Morales
in JFK Assassination Debate
Posted
Ron, a couple of things to factor into the train overpass equation:
1) The police officers stated that they were assigned to the East and West
of the overpass - which means their focus was on the traffic on Elm and
not really on security for the overpass. If you take a close look at the DPD
reports you will see that almost all their efforts on the motorcade route
were about traffic control for the "parade", not about security. The concern
for security and preparations for that were virtually all at the location of
the speech where they expected agitators and demonstrators based on the
model of the earlier visit by Stevenson.
-- note: it's not like an abort team would have been supplementing DPD
or other security in the Plaza, there was none there.
2) The officers were unprepared for people to start showing up on the overpass
and used Holland to vet RR employers just because he told them he was
a company manager; there was no plan for it. Apparently the cops accepted
the position that since it was RR property then employees could be up there.
3) The RR overpass is really quite wide, much more so than it appears
in the photo, there is no way that two cops could cover both ends of it as
well as watch out for traffic problems - and it is worthwhile noting that
these two cops had most of their attention focused on the stalled
pick up on Elm street that would have been a real problem for the
motorcade. They only managed to get it out of there shortly before
the motorcade arrived but that did occupy their attention. Whether that
stalled pick up was pure circumstance or a diversion depends upon whether
you tend to be suspicious of such things. The police report on it afterwards
satisfies some but not others.
4) There is no indication that DPD worried about security per se anywhere
in the Plaza, the only officers west of Houston were assigned to bridges
and overpasses.
5) Plotters wishing to use either knoll would have to have assumed both
car and foot traffic as a possiblity on either side of the knoll, both had
car and foot access - and both were exposed to people looking out across
them, whether it was Bowers in his tower or employees in the Post Office
annex behind the south knoll.
-- Larry