Larry Hancock

William, just to make sure I understand, the header on your site above the documents seems to me to say that someone send Files the original letters (one to someone in Wy and a reply to someone in Fla) along with the official memos essentially showing the NSA bringing a mail intercept of these letters inside the U.S. to the attention of the FBI so that they could bring it to the attention of a JFK investigation (from the date, apparently the HSCA). Am I reading the header correctly?

Are you able to state when Files received all the items including the confidential memos and were they from a Goverment agency or an anonymous source? Have you been able to verify the documents are held by NARA or were ever turned over to the HSCA or more recently to NARA via the ARRB - or does it appear someone essentially lifted the documents from FBI and NSA files and just sent them to Files?

Before commenting on the documents themselves - which certainly don't seem to have been investigated by HSCA or brought to their attention - it would help to understand how Files received them (not only the letters but classified documents about them which seem to reveal a possibly illegal mail intercept program by NSA among other things).

-- thanks, Larry

Jim, actually the ARRB first put in a lot of background work on the structure, mission and assignments for the 112th...including tracking down the actual unit records to determine who was really in charge of what in given time frames. That was a little difficult because the 112th was cross-supporting another MI organization which was being rebuilt after a move in that period. But you can't really figure out what was going on without getting it's structure and tasking correct - which they did. Then you will see a lot of work papers dealing not only with the stand down but other issues like Col. Jones testimony and Powell's photographs. Lots of background work before they starting asking any questions at all. Then you will find interviews with several unit members including Dallas personel and the officer supposedly in charge of the stand-down. His interview and letter to the Army about the stand-down story is pretty interesting.

Only then did they invite Col. Prouty who was very gracious about coming in and giving a long interview including remarks about how he heard the stand down story - at that point it actually becomes possible to do enough leg work to determine what rank the person who called him actually held. But you have to dig into the personnel rosters. This is a story that is still being investigated as there are some additional internal communications for the group which have been turned up but nothing at variance with the ARRB leg work.

If you are going to NARA drop me an email and I may be able to direct you to some interesting new documents that have recently become visible including some relating to the Bayo mission that I have not seen myself.

As to the 112th and the stand-down, I'll leave that to your interpretation but the good news is that there is a great deal of data and as far as I can see no particular obfuscation. There is also universal agreement among all the 112th personnel with the exception of Col. Jones....he (and who called him to testify to the Church Committee and HSCA) remains a mystery (especially since his assignment and duties on November 22 are clearly supported by the documents we do have going to him from Dallas and he seems to have forgotten what job he was really performing as of that time when he gives his committee tesimony) - if there is obfuscation it may well be Jone's testimony which seems to have absolutely and incorrectly diverted attention from the mystery man behind the fence with government identification. That is especially important since we have an FBI report naming a possible candidate for at least one person in Dallas with fake Secret Service ID.

-- Larry

Hi Jim, I'll leave these comments for your return...you've raised some items which are far to broad for an easy forum reply but maybe I can provide some food for thought.

1) It is amazing how much more we know of the cover-up and indeed the details of the hours and days immediately following the assassination now. Much of it is from ARRB era releases, CIA segragated files esp. on Mexico City, the Johnson tapes and areas like Horne's ARRB work on Bethusda - the two brains etc. You can draw your own conclusions from the book but mine is that the cover-up was much more reactive, iterative and in many cases marginal than commonly accepted. In fact without Johnson's ongoing pressure back on Dallas, on Hoover, on Mexico City, on the press and his manipulation of first the Texas Court of Inquiry and later the WC I think conspiracy might have been the generally accepted conclusion. Hoover did not want to exclude it from the FBI report, Mexico City CIA, FBI and Mann were pushing it heavily and had D.C. badly stressed over first Kostikov/Oswald and then Oswald/Alvarado.

It is important to realize though that Johnson was not the only one actively countering talk of conspiracy - so was Robert Kennedy. Mann makes this clear in a letter to the HSCA. There are also suggestions that there was actually a high level contingency plan that kicked in based on prior concerns (initiatially established at RFK's request) about Castro retaliation against senior U.S. government officals for the attempts on his life. This area is very cloudy at the moment but you may well see more detail emerge on it within the coming year. This plan was apparently leaked to the HSCA early on but as with many things was not explored - at least for the record.

2) As to the cabinent flight and code book, I'm not sure that's terribly significant because the reality of the situation was that there were really only two people who could have changed the course of events, the new President and the Attorney General. If RFK had aggressively championed a case of conspiracy not even Johnson could have stood against him, but he didn't. There are some tantilizing rumors that from the very inner Kennedy circle that there was at least minimal discussion about what would have to be done to prevent Johnson taking office but that is sheer gossip and I'm not sure it will ever be more. As we all know though, to this day the Kennedy family in general is very uncooperative in regard to anyone on this subject ...especially in regard to access to primary evidence, we won't even go into dumping the coffin (a primary piece of evidence in regard to Bethusda as Lifton and Livingston developed) into the Atlantic ocean at Bobby's request.

3) As to the 112th and Prouty, a very long story there with much work done by the ARRB including an extensive follow-on interview of Prouty in regard to his remarks about the stand down, and with others in the 112th. Still a lot of questions about some areas but I'd urge you to read the actual interviews with all parties, the background material on the 112th and the ARRB working papers. You

can get it all from NARA or from Lancer on my CD which includes my work on the 112th.

4) You mentioned the other investigations - for reference we also know a great deal more about the subversion of the Garrison information since we have the CIA internal working files and memos on their Garrison Team and we also have the Justice Department files. Interestingly one can make a great case that Justice was a great deal more active in subverting the investigation and especially in aiding Shaw's defense than the CIA. In fact in most cases the local FBI office was reporting to Justice who informed CIA and it was the local FBI who arranged the actual meetings with Shaws lawyers and support for them. This could be a book in itself for anyone wanting to slog through the documents.

-- Larry

Hi Lee, I'm certainly glad you are finding the book worthwhile. Let me tackle a few of your comments/questions for starters.

The update errata sheet is posted on the Lancer site, please see:

http://www.jfklancer.com/catalog/hancock/index.html

And of course I'll be happy to mail the current working version to anyone

who asks; hope to have version four done by the end of May.

Lisa Howard's death was very sad but may be explained by two facts, first she was apparently brokenhearted about seeing the Cuban backchannel she had opened up fail even though Castro tried to pursue it with Johnson - even going so far as to offer Johnson the out of staging some incident against Cuba to help ensure his re-election. Howard's career also suffered a good deal at this point and it's my understanding that she became extremely depressed and even despondent - and actually holidays are one of the worst times for suicides as everyone else being so overtly happy makes seriously depressed folks feel even worse.

Groden's heavy set man image is over on the far left - the dark complected man/men have generally been reported to the far right. However the image is interesting in that some of the trajectories posed to explain Connally's wounds seem to come from the far left of the TSBD. Actually one of the safest firing positions would have been from an open west window on the sixth floor as that would have been much more totally concealed from the crowds on Elm.

The Trafficante information is most interesting (side note - a friend of mine used to baby sit for Regano and was quite scared on the occasions when Mr. Trafficante dropped by looking for him, Trafficante had a reputation as a very scary man).

In any event, his imprisonment has always seemed to me to be more in the way of a "negotiation" by Castro or some of his subordinates and I think it's a very good chance he did cut a deal of some sort. I tend to think that Trafficante may have been playing both sides at least for some period of time. His remark about an "arrangement" rings true to me.

Sorry, no further detail on the station wagon....the description would fit most any of the models of the day....wish I did.

-- Regards, Larry

Hi Jim, thanks for the remarks and just a little information about Noel Twyman, actually he did continue a bit of research after the publication of his book and he was kind enough to let me publish it for him as an appendix to my own (which is directionally a continuation of work done by both Gaeton Fonzi, Dick Russell and Noel Twyman). The appendix is Noel's extensive interview with Roy Hargraves and Gerry Hemmings brother. I also managed to integrate some additional work that Noel had done verifying that Col. William Biship (or whatever rank he really was) did indeed know Hargraves circa 1963.

Noel had done the work with the thought of a second addition but age, health problems and a good sound view of priorities led him to decide to at least try and avoid the temptations of Kennedy conspiracy obsession - a challenge most of us cycle through every few years...grin.

And it's definitely Larry, nothing more formal than that...

Hi John, here goes on some short responses to your questions:

1) There is only partial documentation on the contents of Nagell's car, the items which I discuss in my book were listed on the second page of an FBI report and the first page seems to have vanished. Dick Russell could not find the detailed property reports in the court records nor was there a personal property report e.g. wallet, contents of wallet etc. What is documented is very suggestive but its worth noting that Nagell made continued efforts to get all the personal and car property back to aid in his defense and that was repeatedly denied. In fact only part of it was ever returned and that was many years later as part of his personal law suit.

2) There is no direct confirmation of a warning letter to Hoover, the only circumstantial points tending to confirm it are covered in the book including the special questions for the very early interview of Marina Oswald - questions sent from FBI HQ that could indicate that Hoover did indeed have an advance warning from Nagell specifically about Oswald.

3) As to Nagell's mental state, I spent about a year and a half going through literall all his medical records, court records etc before I was convinced that there was a clear pattern which would support him as a viable witness - clearly some of his statements are very conditional in regard to what his goals were at given times, especially during the period when his only main goal was recovering custody of his children. You will find all those documents and my analysis on the CD on Nagell available through Lancer; it's probably the largest composite collection of Nagell documents around.

4) I have no indication that Thorneberry was in the June planning meeting and he would seem out of place considering the stature of the other attendees... Carter was there though.

5) I have no real evidence that Thorneberry's appointment was anything other than sheer patronage; he clearly was a long term Johnson personal friend and Johnson had no qualms about appointing friends to positions regardless of their qualifications. It's certainly an interesting coincidence of course, it's just that we will never know for sure if perhaps Johnson called up his friend and asked for some minor favor in making sure none of Nagell's inflamatory claims about Oswald and a conspiracy got any public visibilty....for the good of the country of course.

-- Larry

Dixie always makes good points

I can say from personal experience that forums are invaluable for surfacing

corrections, regardless of how much peer review occured before publication.

On the basic question though, one solution is electroniclly available errata sheets. The third version for my book is posted on Lancer now with the fourth becoming available this month I hope. And the errata include not only corrections but elaborations on content (such as John's pointing out Billing's involvement in Garrison's investigation) and new research (such as the Red Bird DC3 incident). As I see it the author has to stay with a book for at least a year afterwards doing corrections and essentially improving it. Noel Twyman did a sincere job on a print errata sheet for Bloody Treason but his health did not permit his carrying that on beyond a certain point. And waiting years for a second edition really does not cut it.

P.S. Anyone wishing to receive copies of my errata sheet can always email me directly as well as send corrections or elaborations. I'm all for colloboration in whatever form possible.

-- Larry

Sorry, make that Rhode Island not New Hampshire...short term memory

error on my part in posting.

-- Larry

John, I think that's a very good point even if he would only talk some about

the Bayo mission or about his activities in the Life investigations. Certainly he might even talk about how he was chosen by Blakey.

The best I've come up with so far is that he is still alive and possibly in New Hampshire but nothing beyond that...

-- Larry

John, I would certainly agree with you on two basic points:

First, certainly Garrison's early premise is closer to the real truth of the conspiracy than the Billings/Blakey premise. I am not a proponent of the MOB did it theory (although almost every time I introduce Roselli into a thread for some reason some people want to take it that direction; when they do it indicates they really have not spent much time with Roselli or the syndicate dynamics circa 1963). Garrison did "cut the trail" of the conspiracy as it came into focus selecting Oswald as a patsy in New Orleans and his investigation posed a real threat in exposing Oswald as something far from a lone nut. However I have to say that for a full picture of how CIA and especially Justice neutralized Garrison you need to read the Garrison Team Documents (CIA) and the related Justice Department documents in the Russ Holmes Work File (available from the the ARRC and via Rex Bradford's site); whatever impact Billings had on Garrison is minor to the what you will find in full view in those files. And among them is the list of the people in New Orleans that the CIA was most worrying about Garrison exposing or putting on the stand....and that did not include Clay Shaw, it did include Emilio Santana and others that were serious operational CIA employees in the war against Cuba.

Second, I agree that Billings certainly was pitiching mis-direction, as much so as Blakey's book. I just don't have the data to explain why or exactly who was behind it. Certainly I would open the door to Life's excecutives or Billings himself as much as the CIA ...I would note that as far as the data in hand it is not accurate to think of Billings as a CIA asset (probably not nearly as much as there is to point to a well known Dallas newspaper man who did far more to subvert Garrison and was a CIA asset and want to be employee).

Sorry to ramble, I agree on your high level points but I can sometimes be painfully slow, at this point Billings motives and direction remain an open question to me - although the effect is clearly that of mis-direction.

-- Larry

Hi Jim, I know you are closing out the thread but I'd like to make a couple of suggestions and bring up something not discussed earlier.

There are a few early books like Accessories after the Fact by Meagher, Manchester's book, Weisberg's work - especially his unique work on New Orleans where he did first hand research for Garrison - that should be required reading for anybody - Meagher's work on the WC "ages" very well since it's built largely around her excellant logic and illustration of contradictions and "holes". And Manchester was extremely through and cites all his sources (problem being of course that some of them may have been witholding or managing information).

The same can't be said for many of the earlier books because of the simple fact that they did not have documents and even statements from individuals who have talked in the last decade available to the authors. I think many newcomers still do not realize the immense amount of new information turned up by the ARRB, the releases of the 90's and statements from Doctors, medical personnel, FBI agents etc. Lifton's early Bethusda work has been greatly expanded by first Livingston's interviews and then later by Horne's fantastic work with the ARRB - Horne's Lancer presentations and the medical essays in Fetzer's MIDP are invaluable. The same goes for William Law's Lancer presentations and upcoming book. When you get to areas like Mexico City you will find Newman's document research and presentation online at Lancer via Joe Backus's efforts, complemented by Peter Dale Scott's Deep Politics II. My baisic point is that a good deal of what was written 30 years ago plus seemed good at the time and some of it has been validated but some of it turned out to be simple lack of information.....and the more current information is not in books, it is in conference presentations, articles or document releases.

And some of it is in very good history books that are not on the above lists at all, those include books on the Johnson tapes (Taking Charge) as well as in books such as The Last Investigation by Fonzi and more recently Sons and Brothers by Kennedy historian Richard Mahoney and J. Edgar Hoover by Keil. Sons and Brothers gives better and more comprhensive coverage of the conspiracy than a great many of the "conspiracy" books published over the past 40 years.

If you want documents, go to Lancer's collections and CD's or to Rex Bradford's History Matters site for starters.

--just my opinion, after 15 years of slogging, Larry

James, I would think that Dunkin would be in somewhat the same mold but probably much less "connected" inside Life itself....he had orders for the same sorts of stories and photo journalism. He must have heard the same gossip and some of the same rumors afterwards - but he surely didn't go running to the WC. not that it would have done any good. I can't help but belive that many people who heard the rumors in Florida, New Orleans and Dallas caught a quick drift of the way the "wind was blowing" and decided just to keep their suspicions to themselves. Certainly we have quotes from FBI agents who could clearly see their jobs depending on following the official story and we know Mann said the same thing about many personnel in Mexico City.

I guess that's my cut on Dunkin unless anyone can come up with some further insights - which I would certainly welcome.

-- Larry

John, as far as we know from the records, when RFK was told about the CIA using mob assets against Castro he became very upset and ordered that he be informed if anybody even thought about doing that sort of thing again. However at that point nobody informed him that Harvey was in the progress of restarting the project and nobody went back to tell him that Roselli was being used again (and Verona for that matter as well as other Trafficante network assets). And indeed it was the 1962/63 activities that Roselli did not talk about in his first visit to the Committee and which were rumored to have been the focus of the next round of questionin...which was pre-empted by his murder.

All I can say is that according to the documents Bobby did not know about the project restart with Roselli and also did not know that Harvey had indeed been given permission to refund and continue ZR/Rifle through 1963 for that matter. If anybody has some different data I've certainly got an open mind on the subject.

-- Larry

Lee, you make some good points and I sure don't know enough to make the call, I do know the FBI investigators thought it could be either way - either somebody in the syndicate was tired of Roselli's visibility or thought he was still trying to keep his hand in certain deals (especially in LA) or that it might have been some of the guys associated with him during the Castro assassination attempts. Points in support of each are:

1) Some high level syndicate boss or bosses just got tired of the amount of press Roselli had been getting and Giancana had gotten through Roselli or might get when called to testify. I did read one book written by a mob guy (sorry, can't remember the name) who claimed to be relatively close to Roselli as an underling and stated that he had been harassed by a syndicate leader about the guy having put the contract out on Roselli and essentially bragging about it. Roselli had told this fellow that he and Giancana took the CIA offer on their own to try to get some leverage with the Government (which didn't work) and that they had no approval. The guy also says that Roselli suggested the whole thing might have been a scam on the CIA (sort of supporting the theory of Trafficante playing both sides with Castro). Obviously Harvey had been suspicious of that which is why he kicked Giancana and Trafficante out of the project when he took over with Roselli). Anyway, both Giancana and Roselli were "retired" and somebody may have decided they were simply a PR liability what with Anderson reporting on the CIA and the mob.

2) Some of the folks associated with the actual tactical activities against Castro or in Cuba may have decided they didn't want Roselli dropping names, or Giancana for that matter - after all the barrel thing and the shots around the mouth are as much TV Mob signatures as anything else, almost like somebody was trying to suggest the mob was behind it.

Fred Black could probably break the tie between the two options, I don't know of any way to make the call.

-- Larry

Chris, some excellant observations....and the quote on St. George is very revealing.

Given the common Luce family and Pawley attitudes towards JFK, very close to considering him a traitor or at least a unwitting tool of the Commists - and given the Luce personal relationship with David Phillips, it is certainly possible to speculate that at the very highest levels Life magazine had an agenda. First to try and force JFK into action against Cuba, second to make sure he did not get re-elected and then possibly later to make sure nobody looked at the Cuban connections.

There is some anecdotal evidence to suggest that after the assassination Pawley had some suspicions about some of the people he had supported being involved and perhaps so did the Luces (given Claire Booth's rabid politics she may not have cared much though). It's not at all hard for me to see Life a) doing its own investigations just to be first to see what potentially explosive stuff might be found by any real investigation and then making sure it got buried. That certainly seems to be the case in the Life reinvestigation circa 1966-67 that Wallac Millam turned up. Except in that case one of the principals was old friends with Shaw so his defense team got some of the intelligence.

And if some day I learned there had been a Luce - Phillips meeting were both parties agreed that JFK had to go one way or the other it would not be a major shock to me.

-- Larry

John, I would probably give Billings more benefit of the doubt in some areas than others and would give Blakey none (sorry Chris, at least not until he steps up and admits he might have been a tool, at least Anderson had the guts to acknowledge that).

My logic would be that as far as I can tell in regard to "Tilt" Billings was just pursuing his orders to look for exiles doing missions, help them if it didn't cost too much and then do photo journalism. Even Pawley did not know Life was involved until the last minute and that Bayo had taken money and equipment from them. Now if someone turns up a personnel file on Billings I'll be happy to eat my words on all the above, I just don't seen the evidence to support Billings being a CIA asset in Miami - nor any contact reports for him as we see for Sturgis. It's also important to remember that Luce had basically declared war on the Kennedy administration and was using his entire publishing empire to push for an overthrow of Castro by the U.S. (sort of a Hurst sequal).

Was Billings acting for the CIA in Dallas....or with Garrison. Or was he just doing his media job? Certainly what he was telling Garrison would be consistent with what we know of him and with the investigation Life was doing at the time. For anything more I'd need some data. On the other hand it is clear that Billings elected not to provide input on a possible exile connection to the WC, the HSCA or even on Watergate. And he had to have heard the threats against Kennedy that were the street gossip in Miami and he certainly knew how key a player that Martinez was in JM WAVE infiltrations despite Helms statements. At a minimum Billings didn't help the cause, whether he activiely undermined any investigations is an open question to me.

The one extremely suggestive point that he may have been more sinister is his hiring by Blakey...if we knew the how and why of that it might resolve he whole question. Certainly there is no doubt that Blakey was manipulated by CIA if not worse....and certainly he cannot have been naive enough to think a CIA guy was breaking into their safe by mistake....yet he shows no mistrust of the CIA at all, ever. Is that because he was a career beauracrat or something more? Anyone reading Fonzi's book can see that Blakey gutted the HSCA as a real criminal investigation and that his main contribution was getting records locked out of reach for even longer than the WC. And his follow-on book is pure disinformation direction in my view, a little truth and a lot of mis-direction. All in all my speculation would be that Blakey was definitely part of an ongoing cover-up, the how and why of that cover-up may yet be revealed but I personally suspect it has nothing to do with the conspiracy per se.

-- Larry

John, Billings is interesting indeed although it's somewhat difficult to separate his personal activities from what agenda or portfolio he may have been carrying from Life magazine at any point in time. Certainly he was a major Life resource with the work he did in the Miami area in regard to Cuban affairs and his point role in coverage of the Bayo mission is further proof of that. The detail you posted on his contact with the Garrison team is new to me although through the work of Wallace Millam we do now know that there was a very serious "re-investigation" of possible conspiracy which had started either before or in conjunction with Garrison's investigation - we also know that one of the lead players was a personal friend of Shaw and apparently turned over much of the Life magazine research to him. We don't know why the Life project apparently aborted and why it's data was never used by Life. To some extent Billings remark to Garrison about Life's new interest in conspiracy may well be true, the net result though was any information turned up by Life more likely went to Shaw than Garrison.

It's speculation of course but Bethel's remarks about Billings feelings might possibly reflect that Billings had indeed been persuaded by the stories that Oswald was under Cuban/Castro influence hence the whole story had not been revealed?

It is certainly true that Life turned against Garrison and Billing may have been sincere or have been fed the party line that Garrison was not trustworthy and his motives were questionable. How much of that is Billings vs. Life magazine home office executives having been lobied by CIA is a good question - certainly we do now have extensive documentation on the efforts of the CIA Garrison task group and the assistance given to Shaw's defense team by the Justice Department.

It's certainly hard to belive that Billings did not hear the Castro/Oswald/Ruby rumors and stories out of Miami but he certainly does not seem to have ever repeated any of that to investigators. Perhaps more importantly during the Watergate affair he nor Life ever introduced any of the Bayo background material in which at least one Watergate member (Martinez) was a key player. Life had lots of photos showing Martinez on that mission and none of it was ever used in developing the Miami and Cuban exile associations of Watergate.

As to the Blakey - Billings Mob slant for Blakey's book, I'm not sure we will ever really know the purpose behind that but poor Blakey (a proven friend of the CIA) and career beauracrat was left holding the bag of an HSCA report which determined that Lee Oswald did not act alone - possibly the simplest thing to do at that time was to throw suspicion on an easy target like Marcello. However it is interesting to the extent that although Blakey prefers to focus on Marcello and New Orleans, he had totally failed to have his investigators puresue a first party convession to a conspiracy participation by Marcello which had given in two sets of testimony by Thomas Beckham. There is very good reason to discount Beckham at this date in time but I'm told by HSCA investigators that at the time there was strong support for Beckham and Blakey chose to ignore his story - strange behavior for Blakey who slanted his book in that direction.

-- Larry

John, you pose some great questions; I don’t know if we will ever be able to resolve some of them but here are some thoughts:

As to Trafficante’s remarks indicating he ordered Roselli killed, I don’t see that would be the necessary implication. Trafficante was extremely well connected into all things Cuban via his network and may well have been playing both sides of the street based on a deal with Castro or with senior Castro aides. Any such deal could have involved trading information relating to the people being infiltrated for assassination attempts against Castro for access to Cuban for drug running and other money making activities as they could be conducted in south Florida and the East Coast in general. Certainly there are documents to show that there was some law enforcement suspicion of a deal between Trafficante and Castro. Aside from that, we do know that Trafficante allowed individuals and elements of his network to be used for courier and other purposes in support of Roselli’s activities. And we have a report that Roselli had mentioned some of these names to the lawyers representing him in his committee appearances and may actually have mentioned names in committee. The agents investigating his death tried hard to get those names but were stonewalled across the board – one name that does seem to have been known though was Verona who had been associated with Trafficante and his network.

Bottom line, Roselli was getting older, Roselli had talked at least some (including his remark about Ruby to Anderson) rather than “taking the fifth” as standard practice and Roselli was going back to the committee again – the folks associated with him at any levels and especially some of the lower level Cubans he had worked with may have decided he was a risk with or without Trafficante being involved in the call.

Black’s warning to Roselli is another story and I’ve wondered if indeed it was more of an effort just to get Roselli to stop talking – after all, Black was in a unique position, extremely well networked, extremely wll to do, a survivor of the Baker scandal and other military influence scandals as well yet one of perhaps only one or two people to whom Roselli confessed the conspiracy and his involvement in it. Yet Black had no day to day Cuban connections. However he may have had some long term syndicate connections from which he could have heard that there was enough nervousness about Roselli for someone to have a contract out, even if it had nothing to do with the conspiracy? I’ve recently received some new Roselli death investigation files and it is clear that the investigators at one point thought that a trip by Roselli to L.A. and some meetings there ay have made certain people think that Roselli was not totally in retirement and that his contacts there might have been resented.

To me it’s perhaps as much a question not of some giant, powerful conspiracy acting all those years later but again a matter of Roselli (and Giancana for that matter) having gone out on a limb in playing with the CIA and getting involved in things that kept bringing government and press attention to any number of violent people. It was one thing for Stugis to get cozy with a media name like Anderson but syndicate folks just aren’t supposed to get in print in the way Roselli had been.

-- Larry

Hi John, a few remarks on the points you raised and the role of Anderson in spreading the "turned assassination team" story.

First, in regard to Tosh Plumlee I would point out that Tosh has taken great exception to the use of the word "confession" in regard to his remarks about going to Dallas, he feels that gives a totally wrong impression of his role there and recently was very adamant about that on the Lancer forum. I would also suggest that anyone who is really interested in Tosh's information start by ordering the NARA files that are available on him and reading though them in detail to establish some context. Tosh frequently shared information with both police agencies and the FBI as well as legislators and government committees - and was the subject of a good deal of FBI inquiry over gun running to Cuba. All these documents are available and essential to evaluating his overall story.

Second, it is very hard for me to belive that Roselli "liked" JFK circa 1963 - perhaps he didn't dislike him as much as RFK but anyone who has read excerpts of the phone taps on Giancana and some of the FBI and Chicago PD files which deal with the Justice Department pressure on Giancana (one of Roselli's main patrons within the syndicate) will find ample evidence that both Giancana and Roselli felt that the Kennedy's had turned on them after Giancana had given support to the Kennedy election. There are some pretty nasty remarks by Roselli telling Giancana that it's time to hit back in terms the Kennedy's will understand - and that is followed by the clearly documented effort by Roselli and Giancana to use Exner as a blackmail device against Kennedy. Roselli even lets her use his apartment during the period she was seeing Kennedy and calling the White House -when Roselli knows his phone is tapped by the FBI.

In regard to Anderson, it would be very interesting to see if he would accept that some of his sources had been using him; that does not seem to be the case from from what I've read in his biography but apparently he may have finally come to wonder about it as he is quoted in an interview years afterwards as remarking that in regard to the story being floated by Roselli and Morgan -

" I may have been a card in the hand he was playing."

It's also interesting to see that Meheu - who recruited Rosellin into the CIA/Castro project - stated that he was skeptical of the whole incident and thought that Morgon or someone else might have been "putting words in Johnny's mouth."

-- Larry

Hi Chris, good to hear from you. On a couple of your points, Ruby's trip to Cuba is a fascinating one - perhaps the most "humorous" is his explanation that he went down there strictly on vacation. Which would mean he picked the point in time to go on vacation just as Castro was locking up all the gamblers - great timing on his part. And of course none of the investigators raised that as an issue at all. But then they didn't tie in his contacts with McKewon which fully explain his dual role in wanting to make sales into Cuba as well as serving - at a minimum - as a courier in the efforts to get a deal for Trafficante. They also managed to ignore their witness that stated he and McWillie were trading coded messages at the time of his trip.

The WC commission really had to work at it to avoid Ruby's connections and the implication of a common thread about things Cuban.

Say hi to the South Florida gang for me. Larry

John, I think that Robbyn may well have interviewed Cummings; I do know that she was heavily involved in doing investigative field work and telephone interviews during that period. I have tried through second parties to get in touch with Summers and more especially to get access to his original interview notes with Flo Martino but have had no luck in reaching him myself.

As to Cummings, I do know that the La Fontaines talked with him and that he was at least moderately accessable in the late 90's, they relate a dialog with him in their book but he would not really do anything further than confirm the basic information in Summer's works. They tried to get anything knew that they could out of of him and he did remark that Martino had been very concerned at the time of the Watergate arrests and that one of the men involved in that had been close to Martino. I pursued that aspect with some research of my own and have pretty well satisfied myself as to the identity of that person - you will see him with Martino in one of the Bayo mission photos in my book. Certainly if any real Water gate investigation had tied in the Bayo mission connection it would have been real cause for concern.

-- Larry

Hi James - given that the investigators really were looking to build on the case against Oswald, Arce's questioning really focused on that rather than on Arce himself - virtually no background on him.

About the only thing we do know is that based on HSCA inquiry, it appears that the assassination may have had a real impact on Arce - or something did - as he seems to have acquired a significant drinking problem within a fairly short time following November 22.

-- Larry

Manchester is one of the best around for having documented his sources, in regard to remarks about the feeling against JFK in the TSBD it appears to have come from one or more of the following individuals - all of which were interviewed by Manchester on Sept 9, 1964:

Roy Truly

Billy Lovelady

Wesley Frazier

It certainly would be interesting to know the exact source...

-- Larry

Hi John, thanks for the comments on the book and here are some responses to your questions:

Classen certainly did not try to profit from the story, indeed he tried to insulate himself from it. An HSCA memo from Lawson to Fenton and Klein relates that Classen first made 5 anonymous calls to the HSCA , was extremely nervous and did not wish to disclose his identity. At first he would only call from pay phones. At the time was contacting the HSCA, early Spring 1977, there was no commitment nor schedule for investigating his investigation and based on an apparent lack of interest he finally stopped calling. Classen did refer the Committee to Mrs. Martino and to her son Vincent, to Jorge Maldonato in Guatamala and to Alan Ross - Miami Inport/Export.

Eventually the HSCA did contact Flo Martino but she supplied them with no corroboration at the time - they approached her out of the blue as it were and I'm led to understand it was rather a shock for the family to have it come out of the blue so long after the fact. At no time is there any indication that Flo or her sons tried to profit from the story, indeed they have maintained an extremely low profile and have talked to only a very limited number of people.

As far as Cummings is concerned, as far as I know Summers is the one who found him with some good investigative leg work. Anyone taking the time to really make a list of Martino's contacts and associates after his return from Cuba would have come up with Cummings, Summers did. Summers had never surfaced the story nor written about it and simply confirmed that Martino had made the same sort of remarks to him as to Classen in the same few months before Martino's death. Given the elapsed time it seems unlikely Cummings had any plan to make money off the story and he certainly has not sense Summer's published his remarks, not even with a single article.

To my knowledge Summer's first surfaced his research in the Vanity Fair article and later incorporated it into his book update - in terms about his remarks in the book, as far as I know Summers did not begin any major new investigation beyond what he put into the Vanity Fair article and then simply used that material and other items to update the book for another edition. I would love to see him start fresh in a new investigation based on that direction but as far as I know it seems unlikely.

-- Larry

John, I'm happy to correspond by email about possible suspects but honestly I've found that it gets pretty unproductive in a forum so I tend to keep my opinions to myself or at least on a one to one basis. Except of course for those individuals I can present a case for myself and with one exception their names are not on that list.

The name that is and that can definitely be linked to the planning, coordination and possibly even the cover-up is John Roselli (or John Roselli, Stratigest as his business cards read). Lots of evidence there.

-- Larry