Larry Hancock

Bob,  Hoover grudgingly gave up Latin America after the war, and officially with the formation of the CIA - however there is no doubt he competed with them in Mexico.  There was supposed to be a liaison with the CIA where individuals suspected of being foreign agents were handed off by CIA to FBI, the Tumbleweed case is an example of that. And the CIA appears to have been pretty good about handing off Americans in Mexico who appeared to be potential foreign assets or on the road to becoming one.  Heitman wrote a book about his time in Mexico, keeping Americans under surveillance, including American film industry folks who had gotten on Hoover's Red List.  Of course the one thing he does not really talk about in that same book is his time in Dallas.

In line with questions in this thread, this is a pretty interesting read on CIA Domestic operations /I ntelligence - Rockefeller Commission
Report -:

https://www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/library/document/0005/1561495.pdf

Ooops....typo or neuron glitch or maybe both.... it was McCone who made the remark to an associate...also in regard to the Moore remark, DeMohrenschieldt did eventually identify Moore by name as the "government man" asking him to check on news on the arrival of the Oswald's back in Forth Worth, which pretty well ties down the contact.  Although I do recall an interview of Moore half halfheartedly admitting to the contact that might be an error and its not in official testimony.  Which is strange because there would be no real reason to conceal such a contact ....on the other hand Moore's documents appear to be incomplete and some are still withheld - I've identified that as a major collections priority should we make any process in encouraging NARA to actually do more collections.

Its always good to find somebody listening closely....grin.  I will leave many of the points to others but most are addressed SWHT/2010 including the extended discussion of the storyboards (taken from Doug Horne's original work and a bit of follow up on my own).  The quick answer on that is that the first set of photo boards, along with a shooting scenario, was taken and I suspect used in a presentation to unidentified senior officials.  The only clue we have on when that occurred  is a note about members of the NSC in a closed meeting on Sunday morning on the assassination (we also have an anecdotal remark by McCone a few days later that he had seen something that convinced him there were multiple shooters).  Following that, and covertly (without the knowledge of the NPIC personnel involved with the first set of boards), on Sunday evening a separate set of boards were prepared to support the official lone nut story and those ended up at the national archives.  Apparently the first set were just tucked away at NPIC until they were noticed during the HSCA and rather hurriedly disposed of at that point.

Per Matt, yes certainly and there has never been any question that Nagell was constantly on the road during 1963, in LA (that is just key of his story, with his trailing of suspicious Cubans verified by Vaughn Marlow who I interviewed, following behind Dick).  And no doubt Nagell suffered from PSTD and other stress related to both his injury and his marital problems.  He never really denied that, and it shows in his ongoing visits to VA hospitals as in Florida that summer.

Bottom line, he was in Mexico City, arguably he connected with a CIA officer he knew in Japan who is a perfect fit for Hecksher and we can now put Hecksher in Mexico City on a mysterious mission in the fall of 1962 and into 1963 when he was pulled back to the US, very possibly just leaving Nagell hanging. Nagell's belongings show he had contacts with CIA employees in LA and one fellow at HQ...but he was also very conflicted and on the fence about the moral compass of US intelligence, military or otherwise. They might have only shown more at one point since only about half of what the police collected was ever returned to him or documented.

And Nagell knew and talked about Oswald and something in play for the East Coat in Sept long before we saw Oswald's letters to SWP and CPUSA about a move back to that area and "going underground".

When you parse it all out Nagell talks about seeing Oswald with Q in New Orleans, posing as a Castro supporter and Quiroga was almost certainly (actually admittedly) doing that to test Oswald (Quiroga had been suspected of being an actual Castro agent before the CIA cleared him),  Of course Nagell was only there for a sort time, recognized by Cuban exiles from Florida and fled the scene.  All he really knew is what he told us i.e. Cuban exiles were messing around with Oswald and attempting to manipulate him.  Which of course given the DRE propaganda going on around Oswald is undoubtedly true and probably extends to SAS and WAVE as part of that story.

Nagell is simply one data point.  And he is not the key to the attack in Dallas, only another source suggesting that Oswald was likely acting along with others, wittingly or most unlikely just being strung along..

The rest of what I have to say is in the SWHT, the blog posts and in a number of shows that I've been on that explore all the pros and cons...of which there are both...in regard to his story.  Nagell is not in Tipping point and I also explained why in a blog post.

After writing extensively about what was credible in regard to RCN and his story (including the admitted CIA names in his notebook) in SWHT as well as publishing a situational study of his changing remarks over the years from his time in jail to his death (via CD including documents - which is unfortunately no longer available from Lancer but may soon go up on the Weisberg archives) and carrying that on to blog posts on his documented (and strangely not investigated) effort to defect to an adversary nation in Mexico City as well as the very likely possibility that the CIA officer contacting him in Mexico City was Henry Hecksher I think I've done as much as I can to paint the full Nagell story as best we can know it at this distance in time.

Given how much time I've spent on it I've no interest in participating in a long winded forum dialog but I would advise there is a great more to Nagell than what is presented to challenge his stability - which certainly is a caution.  The real challenge is to map his claims to what was going on at given points in his life and then make your own estimate of his remarks at any given point in time.

I would also say that when you boil it all down, its unlikely he knew anything about Dallas - what he did know was that anti-Castro Cubans had approached Oswald to begin manipulating him in New Orleans.  Anti-Castro Cubans representing themselves as Cuban agants.  He just could not understand why Oswald would not break off from them - but of course that's another story entirely.  But in the end, his warnings and remarks about Oswald were simply that Oswald was being manipulated by other people and not a lone actor, a story which definitely needed to be suppressed at the time. 

Personally I think Dick captured it all in his conversation with Nagell's lawyer who said he would have made a totally different defense of Nagell if only he could have proved he had been in Mexico City - something we now know without a doubt.

A thanks to Rex Bradford is definitely in order since he has devoted a huge chunk of his personal time almost constantly since the file dump to make the document search tool in place. It involved a major piece of work on his part...

I often picture myself as trying to kick that football...with similar results.   Couldn't agree with you more on the other points!

If its not totally politically biased it might have some opportunities - however it sort of reminds me of what appears to be the first Republican legislative action, which would be restraining the IRS.   I'm rather skeptical that the intent of that is to protect the small taxpayer or to preserve individual liberties....  Hopefully the new oversight committee will be less obviously motivated.

Darn, and here I just told Ben in another thread that I was an optimist...

Ben, I was looking at the whole body of work on the page including the Russia related thread and it strikes me that as a whole it represents a particular world view and agenda which just pulls in bits and pieces in support of that view...sort of like Tucker Carlson's show in that respect.  My comment is simply if  you have an agenda you can always find material to support it, regardless of the original source or nature of the material.

As to Biden and his responsibility, certainly that is true but I've found all virtually all presidents regardless of party very loath to appear weak in regard to security issues or in the protection of the power of the office itself.  Which of course is why we need a truly balanced system to cope with that sort of thing....and a politically unconstrained Justice Department and Court system.

Then again I've always been an optimist and a bit naive I suspect...

Slightly off topic but apparently one of the other activities of these domestic Office of Security field offices was apparently keeping track of criminal assets used by the CIA for various work done by Staff D.  They had to coordinate their use of those assets - including burglars, safe crackers, electronics specialists - with the FBI so that the Bureau didn't bust guys working on sanctioned domestic projects.

Where Meheu fell off the rails with the Vegas tap was because the Castro assassination effort was being so compartmentalized that it brought the FBI actively into the crime and there was no CIA override in place to explain or sanction it.

Such activities clearly must have been a real area of tension between Hoover and the CIA, of course the CIA wanted to do everything itself but I suspect recruiting former FBI agents or using detective firms as covers must have driven Hoover nuts.

An example of how any good work can be weaponized politically...sigh.  Just my opinion of course.

Ben, the threats in Miami involved possible demonstrations or worse from the anti-Castro community so no there was no outreach from the SS, instead they contacted CIA and asked for their help in identifying possible bad actors based on their sources within the Cuban community .  There were no similar threats in Dallas other than from various ultra right actors and special measures were taken to identify them and prepare for demonstrations and violence, especially at the Trade Center luncheon.

I know of threats in Miami coming out of the anti-Castro Cuban exile community and a major effort by the SS to preempt them....targeting the Cuban exile community where the threats originated and using assets out of the JMWAVE station as part of that effort.  

There seems to be no direct connection between those threats and what Milteer referred to nor the names he mentioned as being potentially tied to an an attack on JFK, all of whom were radical racists. As far as Oswald being patsied in Miami, as far as I know that all came out of the Sturgis/Buchanan camp after the assassination with stories he had been in Miami at times but nothing to do with the fall trip specifically. 

As far as other potential patsies in Miami, I'm aware of that discussion but as far as I can see its interesting but largely speculation as connected to any actual threat to or attack on JFK.  The problem is this subject is so broad you can find at least a few pieces of information to support almost any conspiracy scenario and I've gone down way too many of those roads myself. 

As far as Milteer in Dallas,  that was tackled and disproved by the HSCA and there is also a motel receipt Lamar Waldron found placing him in the Carolinas at the time.. ....at this point I've seen a "look alike" for virtually any person of interest in this showing up in DP so unless I have separate corroboration that they were there (as say with Felipe Vidal) then I have to remain skeptical. 

What I offer in these comments is simply my personal research so I'll leave it at that.

Denny,  by not that specific I meant specific in regard to Dallas or even Texas.  If  you dig into the full background of Milteer and his associates you see that his remarks are consistent with the general practices that the NSRP and its fellow travelers were using in all their plans for rifle attacks....as an example shooting from an adjacent building and the use of a patsy for quick pick up by the police is found in the MLK shooting with James Earl Ray as the patsy.  In that attack they even set up a secondary patsy in that case just in case Ray was captured, talked and implicated his sponsors. 

As to what Somersett said afterwards, that's a long story and requires more context on Sommersett than I can give here.

As Lance said, we certainly do know there were a variety of threats - and active talk against JFK - from several groups by 1963 and even from different sets of people within those groups, its really easy to get lost in the weeds as he says if  you attempt to overlay all of it on the attack in Dallas.  

Actually its not quite that specific,  Milteer was being recorded as part of a sting operation related to radical racists - the sting was in anticipation of acquiring a gun they planned to use to kill MLK.   As part of the conversation Milteer described how easily JFK could be shot as well, by a shooter in a tall building etc.   Given that Milteer also referred to Washington DC,  this conversation and the remark about JFK was referred to the FBI who did interview some of the individuals Milteer mentioned and it was also referred to the Secret Service - however since it referred to Washington D.C. the Secret Service filed it in the Protective Services File for that location - and unfortunately as we now know they had no real concept that a threat in one location might mean a threat somewhere else so that meant only a file pull for DC would have retrieved it.

Stu Wexler and I cover Milteer and this incident at great length in our book on the King assassination, The Awful Grace of God.  On a side note, we also cover the fact that the National States Rights Party..to which Milteer belonged and which he promoted...was actively recruiting and training rifle teams to attack JFK as well as leading public figures and Jewish financial figures as well.  On the Texas trip the Secret Service actually picked up a threat report in San Antonio related to the NSRP.

Debra hopes to put all of John's RFK photo / image collection on line but its immense and a new web site will need to be set up to do that so it will take some time.

As to the JFK material, I will check with Stu Wexler on that as he is the most likely to know - he recovered the RFK manuscript and images from John's laptop but I don't know if there was JFK material there as well.

Jim, the military commanders working directly under Barnes and Bissell were shown documents from the inquiries that they were not aware of and those documents made it clear to them that Bissell had been telling them one thing and telling JFK something different, in effect he had lied to them about the representations he was going to be making to JFK about their concerns over dialing down the number and scope of air strikes being planned for the operation. 

The commanders had actually gone to Bissell in advance of the operation, expressed their concerns that the landings would fail and then resigned. Bissell had convinced them their duty was to the Brigade and they would be jeopardizing it if they did so....and he had promised to go to JFK and obtain more air support. 

Based on that they retracted their resignations and proceeded with the operation.  In fact, after further meetings with JFK, the level of air support was actually further reduced, without the commanders being told. This was only one of the occasions in which Bissell can be shown to have been shielding information and concerns from JFK, another major one being the fact that a major campaign against the Unidad revolutionary organization only weeks before the landings had doomed any chance of a major uprising in support of the landings.

Tom, I think taht  you are correct in thinking the inquiry was over operational approval, the timing would be consistent with what we know about the changes in his assignments at that point in time.

Well I will make one more try at this and simply  point out that there is a lot more to this story than in the material presented above....including the essential fact that the estimates of the initial pre-invasion air strikes proved to be way too optimistic - not uncommon since they came largely from the Cuban pilots carrying out the strikes and aircrews do the best they can when under fire. It was only the photo reconnaissance of the following days which showed that a considerable portion of Cuban air was still operational (there was even a major push back on that from Brigade Air  which did not want to admit its failures on any thing about the invasion). 

What any of senior leadership including Rusk knew about those sorts of details is questionable, certainly JFK was not briefed by the military commanders on the post strike assessment nor did Bundy or Bissell bring it up to him when they made an abortive attempt to restart the D Day strike.  Neither of them apparently wanted to tell him the actual level of risk to the ships nor did they understand there was no way the ammunition ships were going to be unloaded and off the beachhead as JFK had ordered, again they seem to have had little grip on the operational plan (you don't unload tanks and ferry them to the beach over nasty reefs in a couple of hours).  And nobody on JFK's staff was in direct communication with the Brigade or even the CIA liaison on he Essex, the Navy command ship.  Nobody told JFK his order to have all ships at sea before daylight was impossible nor that the Cuban crews on the supply ships fled far out to sea under fire (the Navy had to chase and then force them to stop) and refused to return to attempt to supply  the beachead even the following night.

To get the full picture of what was going here  you need to read the interviews with the military commanders when they were actually shown documents covering what Bissell was telling JFK vs what he was telling him (documents only available to show them decades after the event). 

You also need to see Lynch's detailed information on the landing itself and what the Cubans expected what JFK had ordered they be told about American support.  And of course the Navy preparations that I mentioned above, for a second task force and for a false flag at Guantanamo are not discussed in any of the documents mentioned above other than some vague references to how damaging the abortive Nino Diaz mission was to the plan...without any detail on what that mission really was...

Its a very complex story and it is also necessary to keep in mind that remarks by several of the senior people like King, Rusk etc were woefully ill informed and can't really be taken as the reality of what was going on in the operation in real time.

My answer would be "none" as far as I know.....Cabell was never really operationally involved and I would say most of what I read shows him to be woefully ignorant of what was really going on in the field.  We have exceedingly detailed information on the air operations, who gave what commands at what times, etc.  Including the fact that the Cuban Brigade leaders were absolutely briefed before sailing on what support they would and would not receive.  Its also key to remember that Brigade Air Operations were run though a completely separate line of command from the Brigade landing force and that there were actually no provisions for the Air elements to communicate directly with the landing force, nor for that matter any forward air controllers.  Bottom line, the command and control was a disaster from the beginning - which the projects military leaders were fully aware of but could not manage to convince Bissell to fix.

If you want to really get into the timing you can find that Cabell and Bissell had ample time to make their last minute pitch to JFK and inform him of the huge risk of the Cuban military aircraft that they then knew to be operational and not only failed to talk to him and be honest about it but willfully let the Brigade begin to go onshore when they actually had time to actually abort the mission.

I don't mean it to be a sales pitch but anyone interested in this really should read In Denial, I spent the better part of two years going though just those type of details against the extremely detailed information we have now, not only from the inquiries but sources like Lynch's first hand account of the landings.  I'm sort of frustrated more people have not read it and that so much wrong informaition is still ciruculating.....

In regard to the Taylor Commission, I was not precise enough....what I was referring to was the actual transcript of the hearings, not the report per se.   The transcript is extremely important in being able to access which principals knew about certain things or their opinions on issues......the historian had access to at least portions of the transcript as he quotes individuals such as J.C. King and others - which reveals what they did and did not know in some areas.  For example King knew that JFK had actually approved US Air Force transports to conduct air drops over the landing zone on the second night...a major change in the order of engagement.  Yet King did not know the mission was not carried out due to the lack of cargo riggers and air force preparation for any such directive, in fact it appears that he thought it had been carried out until the dialog in the hearings....a pretty sad indication of his involvement considering how critical the air resupply missions were.  Such a mission was definitely not not in the original plan and yet one more area where JFK allowed American action in support of the Brigade which is never really discussed in the histories.

I'm not sure the full transcript has resurfaced even at this date; I relate how the historian appears to have gained access in the book but I'm not up to citing that sort of detail from memory.

On another note, the material we have now clearly shows two things:  The Joint Chiefs agreed that the landing could likely succeed but specified that due to logistics problems in the plan, it would be almost impossible to hold the beachhead unless there was a major uprising and revolt against Castro at the time - which the CIA knew was virtually impossible but made no comment on.  The second is that the air staff section of their response clearly states that if a single Cuban military aircraft was operational over the beachhead the likelihood of losing one or more supply ships and dooming the landing was almost certain.

JFK had directed the landing be totally done and ships back in international waters by daylight but we know from the officers involved that was never communicated to them or part of their plan.  We also know that Bissell was very much aware that perhaps half the Cuban air force was till operational and ready to engage the landing and did not brief JFK or advise him of the risk....just one of Bissell's major sins.

It is, so we have the CIA IG's report which was initially suppressed and Bissell's response to that....and we have the CIA historian's full and extensive report.  The last section of that was most recently released by but not fully endorsed by the Agency as a historical document given its rather obvious attitude and finger pointing (with a special indictment of the Navy).

Then we have the Taylor Commission report, well actually we don't have the full report itself, but the CIA historian had access to it and cites and quotes it repeatedly so we have a great deal of information from it.  One of the things that stands out from that was just how totally out of it J C. King, Western Hemisphere chief was largely uniformed about operations even though the operational people (not Bissell and Barnes but the field people) where under his area of responsibility.

All in all its a massive and damming set of documents on the entire Cuba Project, especially the first 8 months under Eisenhower that really does not receive much attention compared to the Bay of Pigs.

That was one of the points I was making Jim, that there were a great many things going on that JFK was not briefed about and beyond that was overtly lied to about by Bissell.   JFK apparently was not even told about the mainline American Army tanks deployed at the beach head with the Brigade (only one source for those - direct from the US Army), something that would have instantly voided all the deniability he was demanding - and for that matter the deniability Eisenhower had demanded when he ordered the Cuba project in the first place.

Sure Ron,  John was not necessarily widely known in the contemporary research community as he truly was what I would call a very independent and deep researcher;  we talked him into doing one presentation at a Lancer conference but in general he spent all his free time in actual records work, especially with crime scene and forensics types of materials.  He did some amazing work on the JFK case which is still not widely available; John was a perfectionist and wanted to explore every detail and wrap up all loose ends before taking a position on something. 

However when he did, especially one relating to evidence manipulation or conspiracy, he certainly would arouse the ire of people like Dan Moldea...

He was the sort of person who would do hands on work at NARA or in the LAPD files - more importantly he had no fear of consulting actual professionals/experts on a forensics or ballistics subject.  His problem was if they gave an opinion on something and then he revealed it had an assassination context, the waffling would begin immediately.   He discusses some of those experiences in regard to both ballistics and the autopsy in this book.

Among his many artistic skills, John was a master model builder.  In regard to his RFK studies he built an exact scale model of the pantry in his basement....down to the measurements of the floor tiles and ceiling tiles as well as everything else.  He then scaled in the crime scene photos which allowed him to position the locations of individuals doing measurements in photos, of the trajectories they were plotting - essentially to reverse engineer their work and measurements.  That alone revealed the extent to which the crime scene had been examined not objectively or neutrally but rather to support the scenario of Sirhan as the lone shooter. 

To make that scenario work they had to jump though a number of hoops, and ignore a good number of things that suggested additional shots and a far more complex shooting scenario.  John lays all that out and presents the images to go with it - which is why initially his approach (which was ideal for an expository narrative) used several images for each point he was making.  A great approach if you have unlimited space....not so much for either a print book or even EBook, hence the editing challenge.

The example of the scaled pantry study should give  you an idea of his literally obsessive attention to detail - which you will find in the book in the form of his work with the ballistics evidence and in the autopsy materials. Perhaps most importantly, he translates how the court process actually allowed false information to be entered into the record on both,  as well as the evidence for perjury of the LAPD ballistics expert witness.  

Its a bit hard to convey the attention to detail John demonstrated, once he started pulling on a string he just never let go, no matter where it led or how long it was...

I'm guess I'm going to have to say this again, but if  someone has not read the section on the Cuba Project in my book In Denial I honestly don't think you have the full details that are now available to us for a better historical picture of how things came down and the extent to which Richard Bissell knowingly lied to both JFK on one side and two his own military commanders on the other. Or the extent to which JFK did change certain rules of engagement literally on the fly during the three days at the beachead to support the Cuban force and then ordered it to be extracted - in a contingency plan which he had ordered in writing but one which the Navy had not prepared for and which had never been briefed to the Cuban Brigade, just as they had never been briefed or equipped to move into guerilla warfare as JFK had also been assured.

And to Jim, there is circumstantial evidence discussed in the book that Commander in Chief Atlantic had dispatched a super-carrier strike group off the coast of Cuba, equipped with enough air power to literally destroy the Cuban military - and did so without informing JFK.  That force was entirely independent of the Essex Navy support group - which JFK was aware of - and both forces contained Marine landing elements, which had also not been briefed to the president.  The Essex also carried a ground attack air group with specialized ordinance, again not briefed to the president and way outside of the purported support role of that ship.

Even more interesting is the circumstantial evidence that a false flag attack on Guantanamo was in play by Navy Intelligence and CIA officers at Guantanamo, an effort that only aborted because the ordinance to be used in the effort literally blew up after it was transported outside the base. If the attack had occurred the pressure from Commander In Chief Atlantic for massive retaliation would have been difficult for JFK to resist. The presence of the second task force, the ordinance smuggled out of Guantanamo and the abortive explosion are matters of record....as we can imagine there is no written record of the sort of false flag mission I just described, although the Nino Diaz abortive mission is another strong suggestion that such a plan was in play.