Larry Hancock

Gerry, again we go though all the details on this including when Felix was infiltrated and how and in turn how that aborted in the Wheaton leads....but to answer your question the sniper attacks in question at the beach were most definitely in 1961, in the same time frame as the poison plots against Castro. Both desperation moves to take him out prior to the Brigade landings. As to 1963, we have strictly anecdotal information that a rifle team may have remained in play for attacks on Castro, but noting specific to suggest an actual effort was made in that year. Its not impossible but it it had been done it would have occurred under Moore and Robertson's operational oversight.

I suspect that taking Felix's own writing to literally would be a problem; he's a very bright guy, well trained in CIA practices including disinformation. He might tell us enough to convey his general career and exploits but at best we get clues and leads from him. As an example, he writes in some detail about the capture and killing of Che, however from documents we now know that he certainly was not the only CIA officer involved and that some of his personal remarks are not totally correct. I think I probably read and studied his book a dozen times over the years to extract what I thought was useful. One thing that is notable from it, including being impressed by his skills, is the lack of detail he provides about his movements and activities in 1963. His recruitment and involvement in AMWORLD would have been an interesting story - but its not one he decided to tell.

Gerry, the full details - as far as we know them now - about the Varadero Beach plan are in the Wheaton Leads papers that David and I published on the MFF site as well as in Tipping Point. https://www.maryferrell.org/pages/Essay_-_The_Wheaton_Lead.html And yes the chief figure was Felix Rodriquez although a second Cuban appears to have been involved. Felix himself confirmed his involvement in a sniper attack plan, although without giving any details. ....Looks like David posted at the same time I did...

As Jim notes, at one point in time I was given the impression, by someone who did routinely talk with Summers, that he was on the fence about conspiracy, then his second book - Not in Your Lifetime - came out, covering all the standard bases but with a bit of a slant to the Mafia and with no firm conclusion. He certainly did not reject a conspiracy, but he didn't present a definitive solution or assert a conclusion, so it struck me he had indeed ended up on the fence.

Greg, much of the information in those Spartacus bios is pretty old at this point and I have no idea where that came from...Jenkins was in the reserves in Louisiana at some point after WWII, that is part of the bio material on him Wheaton supplied to the ARRB. However Jenkins was a military guy, seconded to the CIA for paramilitary tasks on occasion, as were a number of Army and Marine officers. He was not a CIA officer himself. The remarks about Marcello and a recruitment of Oswald appear to me to be pure speculation with nothing to support them other than geographic propinquity. I don't know here the quote you referenced came from but I can say for sure that its in nothing that Wheaton submitted to the ARRB. I know others have taken it further but for myself I've never gone beyond what Wheaton did say to the ARRB, which was basically that he heard conversations in which both Quintero and Jenkins were being told or disusing the fact that certain of their associates and trainees during the era of the Cuba projects had been involved in the attack on JFK. I would stand by what David and I have written in the Wheaton lead monographs and in Tipping Point but anything beyond that is speculation.

Greg, I'm not sure where you got the part about recruiting Oswald, that is totally new to me. Everyone needs to go back to the original information Wheaton provided to the ARRB, which was nothing more than a lead to two men who might have information on the assassination based on what they would have heard from their associates and people they had trained in earlier years. Hopefully you have read our Wheaton lead papers which discuss what and what was not claimed in the contact with the ARRB.

To me this is one more are where recall can easily blur things like exact dates. Clearly AMWORLD as a project started in 1963 and was administratively and logistically underway by early Fall. Operationally it did not get underway until 1964. Its highly probable Jenkins got his assignment o the project before the end of 1963 and traveled back to the U.S. before he actually assumed his new day job with AMWORLD. Add a few decades of memory to those sorts of details and its easy to get minor variations in dates without it being particularly suspicious. I've gotten dates on my own resume wrong when I chose to rely strictly on memory.,..

Here is the current, updated, speaker list for the 2022 JFK Lancer virtual conference - which will streamed online Friday, November 18th, Saturday, November 19th and Sunday, November 20th. The format will be the same as the previous JFK Lancer virtual conferences - as will the prices. There will be student prices and students will have access to everything listed for the conference-only price. The conference only price is $64.99, the student price will be $34.99 and the full Conference and Digital Download fee is $119.99 The "Conference Only" price will give you access to the conference online, access to re watch the presentations until the 30th of November, and access to the conference Facebook group. For an additional fee, you will be able to do digital downloads of the entire conference. Speakers/Presenters include: Bill Simpich Larry Hancock Robert Groden Gil Jesus David Boylan Brent Holland Jim DiEugenio Monica Weisak Mike Chesser Larry Schnapf Johnny Cairns Rex Bradford I'd like to note that Rex Bradford will be reviewing enhancements to the Mary Ferrell Foundation web site as well as plans for restoring access to the extensive research and resources formerly available on the JFK Lancer web site. Please use the following link to register for the 2022 conference (we know it is the earlier 2021 conference page, but it is what we are using for 2022 as we still are not able to update the actual content on the page due to hosting problems). https://jfklancerpublications.com/?fbclid=IwAR0MYMd_B2oq_oRZRd0mLlXFa7txmrDJblVzitni8uEgyw4RCP4N0XYHlV0 If you have questions concerning registration please conduct Gabriella Glenn, the conference administrator, directly at her email: gab.glenn12@gmail.com .

I did find the Burris folder...amazingly....and am looking for specific documents, however my summary notes say that DeMohrenschildt and Clemard Charles met with Burris on April 26 - DeMohrenschildt was primarily doing an introduction for Charles who was pleading for US intervention in Haiti. Charles was also being worked as a source of intelligence on Haiti by Army Intelligence (Dorthy Matlock of the Army Chief of Staff office) and she was sharing the information they collected with the CIA. She continued contacts with Charles through at least May. I find nothing more on the meeting other than it being listed on a schedule; however it seems not to have made much of an impression because there is a summary report from Burris to Johnson in regard to national security issues as of April and while several countries - even Yemen - are listed, there is no mention of Haiti. Johnson was scheduled to fly out of DC that day and did so, which is why Burris was given the meeting as his national security aid. Whether Johnson stopped by to greet Charles is unclear but if he did it was brief as he did fly out of town that day. During that period of time DeMohrenschildt was heavily leveraging his contacts with Clemard Charles and clearly attempting to impress Charles with his own connections. I should also mention that virtually all the documents I have on the relationship between Burris and Johnson and Burris's work for him are from the LBJ Library files, not from NARA.

I wish I could give you a citation from memory but I can't ....what I do recall, because I was once intensely involved in studying Burris and collected a great number of documents on him, is that there was one which referenced his meeting with DeMohrenschildt in response to his communications with Johnson but there was no indication of Johnson's being in the meeting or even of his particular interest. At that point in time Johnson was letting Burris serve as his second in lots of meetings. If I can find my Burris file I'll take a look but those documents were collected by hand from NARA and I have no idea if they ever made it online. Most were from Johnson's files not from the JFK investigation....

If you factor in a little history and some context it becomes much clearer. Russia began implementing a strategy of energy warfare several years ago, shutting down the gas lines to Europe mid-winter. Europe really didn't push back, Russia proceeded with actions against the former Republics like Georgia and turned the gas back on after a sort time. It was pretty effective messaging. At this point the tide has turned and Europe is building all sorts of new infrastructure, much of it involving expanding and building new pipelines...including under water lines. Putin has just demonstrated that all that infrastructure is at risk. Its just an extension of his energy warfare / blackmail concept and was certainly anticipated by intelligence services, including ours. Hence the warnings.

I can confirm that that Monica Weisak will be presenting at the JFK Lancer virtual conference. Thanks Jim.

Denny, I don't have a full list of speakers from Garbiella (who is largely doing the recurring) so I can't say for sure but could you tell me who it is that has that information - it would help be check?

Jerry is definitely not doing tours any longer, just checked that with him recently. However Jerry referred anyone interested to Freda Dilliard who did tours with him and still does - I can recommend her as well. You should be able to reach her at: 214-676-1510

Indeed David, Oswald was an excellent role player - and "It was (almost) always him". Well said!

The JFK Lancer 2022 Virtual Conference will be held online Friday, November 18th, Saturday, November 19th and Sunday, November 20th. The format will be the same as the previous JFK Lancer virtual conferences - as will the prices. There will be astudent price and students will have access to everything listed for the conference-only price. The conference only price is $64.99, the student price will be $34.99 and the full Conference and Digital Download fee is $119.99 The "Conference Only" price will give you access to the conference online, access to re-watch the presentations until the 30th of November, and access to the conference Facebook group. For an additional fee, you will be able to do digital downloads of the entire conference. We are still finalizing the full speaker list and schedule but a partial list includes: Bill Simpich, David Boylan, Johnny Cairns, Mike Chesser, Jim DiEugenio, Larry Hancock, Robert Groden and Gil Jesus. I will post the registration page link and additional information as it becomes available, however Gabriella Glen is serving as the administrator and web operator again this year and you may contact her directly at her email with questions: gab.glenn12@gmail.com

Thanks for providing the Titovet's accent remarks Greg...

David, I leave the exploration you outlined to you; I was simply posting some contextual material for those interested - I always feel that is valuable. I will comment that Oswald certainly did find a dialog partner in Titovits while in Russia (even before Marina) but of course that is later than the dates you are pursuing.

Not sure about Marina but Oswald's friend and language "buddy" in Russia discusses the language and accent issues at some length in his recollections - which I certainly recommend. That would be Ernst Titovits in Oswald / The Russian Episode

The following article might be of interest to those reading this thread, it offers some interesting ideas plus some informaiton on Marine incentives for language testing: https://aarclibrary.org/lee-oswald-the-russian-language-by-greg-r-parker-jim-purtell/

Gerry, no opinion on Andy Anderson but it is not usual to find and officer's real name on CIA documents and also find he used one or more false names for social contacts, in many instances those would not even be recorded unless they became part of an actual operation. Wish I could help, Larry

I'm not sure either - and honestly I'm not a total fan of Epstein channeling de Mohrenschildt. As far as I can tell the typist did finish the Historic Diary using Oswald's notes and that's what he offered to de Mohrenschildt. George wrote about critiquing what Oswald had written and offering him suggestions - but he described those suggestions in terms of what would create a piece that would be more salable, not the sort of remarks to get more detail about the factory inserted. So we hit the wall of what Moore actually got once again...sigh.

I would definitely say that both groups were going rogue in regard to the controls JFK thought he had in place - and to an extent Des Fitzgerald was letting them get away with it, which is somewhat surprising and definitely not what JFK would have expected. Was Fitz doing it because he figured it was the only way for him to succeed in his assignment...maybe. Was he just another senior officer who got scammed because he was so distant from actual operations...maybe. But there is really no reason he should not have gone to JFK or RFK about TILT, which he was informed about after the fact, given our politically explosive that was...and it would likely have meant an end of career action for Shackley and even JC King. If TILT could happen pretty much anything could. Overall JFK thought he was bringing it under control by moving the campaign up a level to a multi-agency format (with State playing lead - and State backed JFK's positive response to Castro, while being concerned CIA would somehow undermine it). And by kicking off a transition program to move covert Cuban ops away from CIA to the military - but the front line guys at WAVE heard all about it and some of them did indeed undermine things, by going directly against JFK...my view at least.

Gerry, about all I can say is that my impression of the CIA being concerned about legalities is indeed more a matter of "after the fact" concern rather than something that constrained them too much in daily activities of the time. Certainly the Agency acted to conceal many of its activities (legal or illegal) and obfuscate legal inquiries into them. PR was a concern but possibly a greater one was their obsession with protecting the identities of personnel, sources and of course methods. I'm just not sure legalities every bothered them that much - take a look at Helms conviction for perjury and you get a feel for their attitude towards being constrained by the law. In this case I'd be more inclined to think that the basic concern, and what was being covered up was that they had paid any attention at all to Oswald once he was back in the States - distancing the CIA from knowledge of Oswald was pretty much a fixation after the assassination. By the way, I assume what is being discussed here is Oswald's Historic Diary which he had typed up shortly after his return: https://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh16/pdf/WH16_CE_24.pdf Or have I missed your point and have the wrong thing in mind?

We actually have the FBI reports of their first two meetings with Oswald, he was very uncooperative in the first, more so in the second saying he would report any foreign contacts to them. However he also lied to them on certain points about his entry into Russia. I do not recall if those FBI reports were copied to CIA HQ, that would be important to check. What I can say is that the FBI and CIA always competed for information and the CIA generally felt that standard FBI interviews (which were very closed ended in most cases and of the "have you stopped beating your wife yet, just the facts" format) were not all that effective at getting the full story. Given that Moore already had a source in the Russian community my guess is he figured he could probably get a better read on what Oswald was really thinking and especially how he felt about Russia and communism than the FBI could - and I suspect he was right.