Larry Hancock

Pat, as far as the media goes, to a certain extent they are in the same boat the CIA, FBI etc.

Do you want to be the long time investigative reporter and industry name who stands up and says....uh, well we missed that JFK conspiracy but we do everything else right so trust me, trust my network, trust my publishing house. Even if you have a stroke of conscious your media ownership group is not going to be excited. Certainly easier for the media establishment in general to say - as I have heard DPD and FBI people say, hey, we got our man, you guys are just wasting your time.

Or do you want to be the new CIA Director that admits that former Directors lied and covered up and consciously chose not to investigate.... but that we should all trust you and your Agency now.

Or the FBI Director that fesses up to what they really knew about Oswald...heck, they won't admit what they really know about the OKC bombing and how they let that slide into 911. But that's another story.

Never understimage the power of CYA...

Or the pain of admitting you screwed up....especially if it's not just you but a Corporation or government agency - or administration.

As to those documents....well my advise would be to rely on History Matters.... I know Rex doesn't have a position to defend, McAdams truly does. Then again, so do I, which is why try to get people to read primary sources whenever possible.

-- Larry

Jack and William, first no worries. It just so happens I'm paranoid in general and was watching over my shoulder well before I got hooked on JFK research - not only do strangers not get in but I have a clear 360 field of fire.

My comments were largely directed towards current day researchers and perhaps more obviously frequent online posters - in my expereince many of the very best researchers are extremely low profile and you don't see their names on the internet. And they do share research - once they have vetted you.

Of course here is no doubt that there was active agency interferance, monitoring of researchers and penetration by agency assets not to mention official counter conspiracy campaigns during the 60's and 70's. And I'm personally convinced that some folks (who get publishers) have been at best maneuvered - I'd put 'they call me Gus over at the CIA' in that category but that's just an opinion. I have a nice document with Helms signature describing how they convinced one big name reporter that Oswald was not filing reports on his Russian trip and a note at the bottom expresses the hope that they can keep him convinced at least until the program in question airs. Others most likely have their own agendas from the start - some make careers out of defending the party line and become official media historians (like Posner who has no history credentials at all and gets called as a talking head all the time; someone like Newman who does have credentials is obviously not nearly as high up on the media call lists). Some just do hit and run, collecting everything they can get and publishing and then on to something else.

I do think there is a big difference between obstruction by agencies....some of which is clealy just traditional CYA and some of which may be more personal (after all folks, our new CIA Director to be worked at JMWAVE during the secret war, it's not like some of this stuff is ancient history) and the current activities of researchers. But then I've been accused of being an asset for somebody myself because I tend not to belive in grand, long term conspiracies.....

....Larry (if somebody is paying me the mail intercept program must be getting the checks).

Hey Bill, what can I say. Some folks take photos that make them look younger,

some look older and some take photos that pretty much prove that they

just shouldn't take photos.

Explaining my previous position on not having photos myself...

Anyway, I've seen Bill and I've seen Jack and I'll volunteer to ID either of them

in a line up.....although no T-shirts please, that would really throw me off.

-- Larry

Pat, a fascinating question. Part of it obviously has to do with the fact that evidence and testimony has clearly been managed, Agency officers have destroyed or concealed evidence and in some cases committed obfuscation in testimony and in other cases given either disinformation or outright lies (depending on your interpretation) - an example being Helms denial that Sturgis was associated with the CIA or that Martinez was anything more than a casual contract employee. When you start with that baseline it makes you certainly creates a healthy skepticism...which can easily extend to other researchers.

Another part has to do with the fact that most long term CT folks develop pretty strong opininons and some of those beliefs are are very much based in larger scale political or social beliefs which for many involve a certain lack of confidence or mistrust of government in general and a healthy concern that it has its feelers out in anything having to do with challenging official/establishment story lines. It's not hard to go from worry about instrusive government agencies a suspicion of "forward leaning" activities, as some of our CIA folks used to call it.

I think another thing which feeds paranoia (I know it does for me occasionally) is the number of die hard LN folks who seem to spend an awesome amount of time and energy challenging conspiracy data - after a time you sort of wonder why they just don't let us obviously misguided CT folks wonder off by ourselves - since it's unlikely we are going to harm anyone or change any textbooks - and not waste their time on us. After all, are there similar efforts to counter folks in the flat earth society? So after awhile there is a tendencey to go - hmmm, somebody must be paying them for that, its so tiresome and such a waste of time they can't be doing it for entertainment. However, it's important to keep in mind that there is a large international skeptics organization filled with folks who apparently enjoy doing just that sort of thing so perhaps it's not that mysterous.

Oh, did I mention all those opened letters and packages, the beeps on the telephone lines, the undelivered and delayed emails, the researchers who take out their wallets and their FBI ID drops out on the table, you know that stuff.....grin.

-- Larry

Folks, I can certainly say that the photo looks like the Bill Miller

who I talked to in Dallas and who presented at the Lancer Conference

that year....perhaps just a tad bit younger in the photo but that's

him.

Or at least the Bill that I talked to in between his taking folks over

to the window to look at the pictures and negatives of the

windows in the TSBD.

And his voice sounded like the Bill who calls me occasionally as well.

-- Larry

That would be Larry who has no electronic photo to post and no particular plans to get one but who you can see in person in Dallas most every November....just in case anybody was wondering...grin.

John, my thoughts on the tramps are the same as my thoughts on many of the other details of DP on November 22 i.e. the investigation was so poor, there are so many pieces missing and the questioning of the witnesses by both the FBI and WC staff was so horrendous that we will be left debating things like the tramps forever. Which is one of the things that after a decade or so let away from such debates and into a different tack entirely.

Of course I've spent time on the tramps as everyone has, and it's clear to me that at least two sets of tramps and possibly some singletons were taken into custody - but never really seriously investigated or booked in regard to the JFK murder. You can find traces of both sets in the DPD tapes and police reports including tramps over by the postal annex and the tramps Bowers fingered for the DPD. The ones Bowers saw were in a train moving back through DP from the East with the engine down by the overpass, indicating they would have boarded outside the Plaza itself. And he clearly saw a man in a gondola which let him to stop the train, nothing about men in a boxcar.

It bothers me a good deal though that Bowers does not mention the incident in his first day statement (for all he knew at the time he had just personally fingered the President's murderers?) nor does he mention it in any following testimony. It should have been pretty dramatic, lots of armed police pulling several men out of a railroad car - but there's nothing on the record.

Also, although I have some problems with certain of Holt's details about his activities on Nov. 22 I personally feel that he is one of the open issues that deserves a lot of serious investigation he has not received. His daughter shared a great amount of detail about names for front companies he had named and people he had known and I do not know of anyone that has truly researched that yet; it gets repeated but research is what's needed. And his story about the ID (although it seems a bit incredible that it would be brought into DP and distributed on site the morning of the assassination) is especially interesting given the independent FBI report of Hargraves being seen with SS ID and Hargraves own admission that he carried SS ID.

All in all, I've pretty much given up on the issue of the tramps themselves but I'd like to see some serious research into some of the other information provided by Holt - what I'd really like to see is one single piece of evidence confirming that one of the names that he was given was indeed one of Tracy Barnes Domestic Ops front companies.... then the game would indeed be in play.

-- Larry

John, Lancer should have it in stock and you can certainly order there. If for some reason you have problems with that it is also in stock with Andy at the Last Hurrah Bookshop and it's on Amazon as well.

-- Larry

John, feel free to email me direct once you begin reading the book; I'll make sure you get the most current errata/news sheet version.

I think one of the most interesting things about the people that did talk, especially the "leaks" in advance of the assassination, is that it is possible to trace the leaks back to some very specific sources, which gives us a very good sense of direction back towards the origins of the conspiracy.

-- Larry

John, there are lots of old newspaper articles, out of print magazine articles etc. Gordon Winslows WEB site on Cuban exiles also has some information on various Interpen associates.

Probably the books that would give you the most detail would be Bloody Treason by Twyman which contains the most extensive set of interviews given by Hemming himself as well as my book Someone Would Have Talked which as a good amount of information on associates as well as a follow on interview that Twyman did with Roy Hargraves. You would also find some good information in Deadly Secrets by Hinckle and Turner. In addition, JFK Lancer offers a CD on Hemming which has his conference address from several years ago and a good number of documents pertaining to him.

John, I very much doubt that Barnes would have been directly involved in

the tactical elements of the assassination. He had no experience or expertise

in that area and apparently was not generally well respected either for either

tradecraft or security consciousness. Equally importantly, he had no close

personal relationship nor trust established with the exiles. Those criteria point you towards people like David Morales and Rip Robertson.

However Barnes was in a very key position to do two things which related to

the conspiracy, first, a case can be made that it was his position and personal

dialogs which led many officers and many exiles to belive the story that JFK

was solely responsible for the failure of the BOP invasion - Barnes can be shown

to have aggressively taken that stand inside the CIA even in the face of it's

own internal investigation. The "legend" that JFK was a traitor very likley

started with Barnes and continuted to be reinforced by him. Secondly, Barnes was in a key position as a senior agency old boy to know and pass on the 1963 word about JFK's opening negotiations with Castro; as in a more minor way was Morales who had inklings of the new strategy from the SG meetings.

Hemming has said - among many things - that it was the "patriots" who orchestrated the assassination and that the mechanism was a matter of inciting key exiles to action, he refers to "baiting" them. I might have called it incitement instead. That of course would be done by the personnel who had direct credibility and confidence with them, not Barnes. Vidal described how CIA officers carried that message to key exiles in Miami in the summer of 1963 and that it had the impact of setting off a bomb among them. I tend to belive that in this case Hemming is telling us exactly what did happen.

I also think it is at least probable that information about Oswald and certain of Oswalds actions - including his vulnerability as a patsy - may have been passed on by Barnes due to his oversight with the new Domestic Operations division; it's

a question of whether or not DO was directly involved with the FPCC project which was carried out in 1963.

I will be adding a sizable appendix on Barnes to my upcoming second edition, thanks to a lot of literature searching by Pat and a bit of work of my own.

It would definitely be interesting to have some factual evidence of where Barnes was on December 22, 1963 though. If this all was as personal for him as it might have been - it could explain a reather interesting photo that James Richards has previously posted of individuals clustered at the corner of Main and Elm in Dallas?

-- Larry

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