Larry Hancock

Well after 30 some years on this I probably know more than I can remember...grin. Creating Chaos is actually a study of the different levels of political warfare as the US conducted it during the first Cold War and how Putin moved into it in this century as well as other players such as China and Iran. The reason it explores Mexico City is that serves as an excellent example of how the US managed to very effectively conduct a deep level of political action due to a positive relationship with the Mexican government at the time, something Jeff Morley has written about extensively. The extensive phone tap and related surveillance operations have now been thoroughly documented in Mexico City the extensive CIA Mexico City history as well as related CIA documents.

Yes on both State Secret and Creating Chaos. Basically the CIA had installed telephone taps on lines coming out of the Cuban embassy and those lines had to be either monitored in real time or tape recorded - it would be just like having another phone or phone/tape recorder connected to your telephone at a wiring point you were unaware of....its not an electronic bug but literally parallel wire tap. The CIA has also managed to arrange that dozens of telephone lines for embassies and other targets be tapped in a similar fashion and a Mexico City telephone exchange switch...again, a physical tap going to recorders with someone later transcribing the calls. Because they were physical wire taps, someone could actually place a call to the telephone system as if they were the originator. To answer your question, either people listening to the phone tap or recorders on the tap would simply record everything that occurred on the telephone line - including the dialed digits, the ring back tones from ringing and any conversation that resulted from the call being answered.

Gerry, I think your description of the Oswald calls is right on the money; we can never know for sure at this point but the agencies called seem consistent with issues Oswald was concerned with, ranging from legal to health for Marina and the family. And yes, the Mexico City call could have been made to a direct outside line at the Russian embassy. I'm not sure if the Russians allowed such a thing given security protocols but its certainly not impossible. Bill Simpich and I have done a lot of studies in regard to the embassy lines, taps etc in Mexico City and there is also a related question - and that is where the call itself originated as well as where it was recorded. The Cuban embassy was subject to a number of US taps, both inside the building at times and at other times physically outside the building where the building wires were connected into the telephone network. Mexico city CIA operatives monitored both types of taps...and since they were indeed taps, a call could have originated from a CIA monitoring point via the tap and on to the Russian embassy. It would not have to come from inside the Cuban embassy. In turn the Russian embassy was served off a telephone exchange/switch where a whole series of taps were made within the switching equipment and taken directly to recorders. That set up was done by the CIA with Mexican govt. permission and was a huge operation with a number of targets, not just the Russians. I'd refer you to Bills writing about this but the basic point is that calls could be made and conversations recorded totally from outside the embassy building themselves; I also write about it in some detail in my book Creating Chaos. As an example.

That's getting very close....basically a larger office building would have a small switchboard to route incoming calls to the desired department or individual. Of course many individuals at the business or office would have their own outside lines as would departments - so they could receive and make calls on their own. The major departments would most likely have listed telephone numbers in the directory and then there would be a general number for the business or agency. By the 1960s key systems were already coming into play so a secretary might have a key system and take calls for a department or office that did have a listed number, they they would tell the right individual to pick up on a line. The Key System served as a mini-switchboard and also might have a published number in the directory. An exchange is actually a telephone switch which automatically routes dialed calls, at that time exchanges were named and the prefix was part of the number. Depending on size an exchange (switch) might have a switchboard for operator assistance, charged calls etc or, if smaller. multiple exchanges might all be routed to a set of operators at a large switchboard. You would get to that telephone company switchboard by dialing operator assistance from within the exchange and the operators would provide help or assist with calls. It appears that Oswald generally was having to call agencies at their listed numbers and then most likely try to get the operator to assist with directing him to the right department or individual. In your examples, if you had the the heart consultants actual direct line you would be able to dial right through the telephone exchange switch to their phone and ring it..of course the number would more likely be that for their office/secretary and you would would end up at a small switchboard or key system where they would forward you to the consultant's own phone or just let him know he had a call to pick up on an extension. If you just had a number for the hospital where the heart doctor had an office you would definitely to to a building switchboard (through the telephone exchange switch) and then be connected to their office number where the secretary would do the same as described above. Basically exchanges are automatic switching systems and if someone has a direct line which is connected to that switch you can ring them directly with no intervention. Switchboards come into play if you need assistance from the telephone company or if you are dialing a number for a business or agency which does not list all its direct lines and there is an operator at a small switchboard or key system that routes you on to internal numbers which are connected to the office switchboard/key system. Hope that helps, Larry

As far as I can tell a lot of the competition was about access - primarily to witnesses, but also to leads and for that matter conspiracy oriented rumors. Motivation to come up with leads or people that had not been truly investigated, to interview them (and one researcher did not necessarily trust another interview skills, as I have been told). Those willing to go to Dallas and dig deeply were to some extent competing with each other, for leads, for interviews and to get the stories that appeared to have been suppressed. As to planting false leads, from what I can tell there were locals who were not in sympathy with the researchers, who thought they were making something out of nothing and who were willing to mess with them on occasion, some who were just natural "jokers" who liked to pull chains. Individuals like Penn who were highly visible and writing on the assassination a lot were easy targets. But even in later years we have had bogus documents planted on us, documents circulated but never with any provenance, coming from unknown parties who do know something about the assassination and even about document formats. Some people just have a strange sense of humor... And in case I did not make it clear before, Mary Ferrell definitely did not trust the Warren Commission report and was quite a skeptic of it and the FBI's work...which drove her to become one of the first document collectors and geeks, looking for things that had been left out of the official story.

Given that I did have some direct interaction with Mary I will share the following observations - first and foremost I would view her as a "critic", she wanted all the information she could get from any source and examined it with a clinical degree of challenge and skepticism. I have to imagine that was fueled from her legal office experience. Actually many if not all the serious first generation critics were skeptics...skeptical of government explanations and of the Warren Commission. In addition it was quite common to find anti-administration political leanings tied to general skepticism about the government in general.... then not everybody automatically jumped to iron clad positions as they do now but skepticism itself was considered healthy. As to her views on the assassination, I have no idea what they were other than the official story was implausible and needed to be questioned. I've seen her in a room listening to everyone from David Lifton to John Armstrong and doing no more than asking questions. Very penetrating questions. I would also note that it was not necessary for the government to create confusion in the research community. I know of at least one instance where Penn Jones (who was eager for just about any conspiracy story) was sent on a wild goose chase by another first generation researcher. My impression is that there was a bit of competition for interviews and leads and everybody did not necessarily play nicely with everybody else.

I'm not sure there is a mystery since each number was investigated and is explained in the records. It is true that several of the numbers associated city Forth Worth and Federal government offices would have gone into switchboards, to be routed depending on what department the caller would be deemed to have wanted - assuming the caller did not have the number for a direct line to an individual or office. I would assume most if not all of the city and government general numbers would have been in the White Page directory and easy enough to find. The numbers do relate to particular switchboards but only per se since they are actually the numbers of that particular office or agency. Given that I'd have to also assume Oswald was calling the general office numbers and ending up at a switchboard because he did not know specifically who or what department would be right for the purpose of the call. The only exception is Anderson, which might be interesting or simply a misdial, several folks think Oswald may have had at least a slight reading disability or perhaps he did just misdial the number in trying to reach the office he wanted to call.

I don't really see any pattern in the calls where the actual numbers were tied down to places - other than the Anderson number which is interesting and seems to ring a bell in regard to Jack Ruby and where he had his car work down, very possibly a mis-remembering on my part though. What doesn't make much sense to me is a reverse engineering attempt to find someone calling him by locating boards/exchanges, not given the fact that most of the actual numbers involved would have been in the phone directories.

Gerry, just to note, there are a couple of types of switchboards in the diary (and yes for a time I operated a switchboard myself). Several on the list were business or government boards...where incoming calls were routed to different offices in the building. Those boards would normally have been listed by the number of the business or agency and they could have been physically listed by address. Key systems were an alternative for smaller businesses or officers where an incoming line was shared between one or more key positions key system hand sets. As an example, some of the publishing firms in the TSBD had key systems and one witness remarked that all the lights lit up at the time of the shooting, meaning everyone in the offices was trying to grab a line to make calls. Oswald could easily get numbers for the public boards though regular telephone listings for businesses, and agencies. The second type of board is an actual telephone company switchboard, normally associated with a larger switching center. Those boards were reached though operator assistance calls for various types of service including long distance billed calls. Not really sure why such a board would have a number per se and they would not necessarily be located with a local exchange, but rather with a call centralized call center for a larger area (an area normally involving several local exchanges).

Vince, not to jump in but I had some extended personal experience with Harry - who even persuaded me to provide funding for Madeline Brown's book (back when I was new and eager and ...more than a little naive). Based on many exchanges with Harry I can say that he was an emotional guy, very committed to his own world view and very much suspicious of anyone who he perceived getting in the way of that. I never saw any sign that he really played well with others although he did do some groundbreaking interviews and deserves credit for that work. My take is that his response to Mary was very personal and consistent with his being very much an independent actor. Anyone "connected" or having any sign of being part of an "establishment" of any sort just escalated his native skepticism - and Harry never kept those sorts of opinions to himself.

No insult but this is just one of many oldies that deserves to be buried - photos and eye witnesses speak against it conclusively. The author of the book presenting it lost a legal action over it. A more recent TV program involved individuals who were thoroughly briefed on the problems by my friend Stu Wexler and essentially responded that they didn't care, it made a great show and they had a contract to produce it so too bad. Actually the element of the book speaking to fragmentation and X ray patterns was worth considering, its just too bad it had to be partnered with a truly bogus shooting scenario.

Rydbert was adamant that he was not allowed to view any of the autopsy materials - a total violation of standard protocol in doing medical illustrations - and was forced to do his work based on very general remarks from the Doctors. He was suspicious of the whole process from the beginning and when we had him speak at a Lancer conference he was outspoken in his opinion of the credibility of the illustrations.

I vaguely recall the claim and my recollection is was based in a purported document which was supposed to be a letter from Ruth to the Navy - however nobody established the providence of the letter or came forth with an actual source for the document (as I remember) and after much dialog the whole thing faded away.

You find FALs, deniable non-American Army weapons, in use with anti-Castro Cuban exiles for a variety of missions including TILT. Check out the "new" images (well they were new when I put them up) I have on my document pages for SWHT. http://www.larry-hancock.com/documents/index.html

Ben, first off to your question, I've seen no sign that the Secret Service contacted the CIA in regard to Dallas - most likely because the public threats and even the warnings for Dallas were all about the ultra right, not about the Cuban exile community as they were in Miami and to some extent Tampa. We can see the ultra right focus In regard to the preparations for Dallas if we look at several important points of context - first, there were warnings about the right wing and a history of violent protest in Dallas from that quarter. So special precautions were taken - almost entirely around the speech at the trade center where the most trouble was anticipated. Special interviews and even photo recognition books were prepared with the help of the press and people who had observed the earlier violent protests. The goal was to be preemptive at stopping the wrong people from getting into the Trade Center and to act against protests there - and arrests were being made even as the motorcade was on the way. Even the DPD officer in charge of security for Dallas was at the Trade Center, not participating in the motorcade. I talked at some length with a former Dallas intelligence reserve officer activated for the day and he said that plain clothes officers were assigned to monitor several known "radicals", but Cubans were just not on the radar. Right wingers, civil rights protesters, etc were - protection was against known threats. The trip to Texas was also one of the biggest protective tasks the SS had faced, with multiple stops, cities, appearances etc all in a short space of time and all following a really hectic travel schedule on the conservation tour and then to the multiple stops in Florida - which is why the advance preparation in Dallas ended up being done by Lawson, as his first actual field experience in taking the lead. I urge anyone seriously interested in this to read his extensive report on the preparations - which he did feel were extensive, rightly or wrongly. Certainly there was negligence in the preparations, but I would also offer that it involved negligence in the whole PRS system which was simply not built to translate threats from one location to another. They seemed to totally lack he concept of mobile threats or of threats from groups - there is no sign they even translated the documented NSRP threat from San Antonio to Dallas. But then we don't really know all of what they did or didn't do because of the destruction of trip files early on in the ARRB inquiry. I see extensive negligence (or more accurately inertia, with practices being driven strictly by past attacks on presidents), but I would also say it was on a systemic level not just in regard to Dallas. We can see that in the fact that Lawson appears not to have been briefed on either the IED or sniper threats which we know about now in Miami. I would also suggest that the "conspiracy" may well have had the opportunity to take a good look at the standard CIA security preparations for motorcades and car travel (as in Florida) and factored that into their plan - given both your and my suspicions about CIA asset involvement and the history of plans to attack Castro in Cuba in an ambush while he traveled by car, I'd say some of our persons of interest would have taken that as their best option.

The FBI only investigated the lead in terms of Souetre - simply because they had been requested to by the French due to concerns abut De Gaulle's planned trip to Mexico. As far as I know they had no specific lead about Mertz. Of course they found that the restaurant employee who had visited his friend in Forth Worth had indeed left the Dallas/Fort Worth area at that time (not Souetre) so a European had left (not expelled per se but I suspect he was on a visa so their might have been a time frame in play) for Mexico City. As you say, the FBI inquiry doesn't write off lots of other possibilities, simply because their investigation was very focused on what the French had asked them to check.

Joe, I don't know that it was SOP and would appreciate seeing your source on it. The military was available on demand but normally requested as needed by the SS - for example military personnel were used on a one or more of JFK's "conservation" tour appearances that fall which were at relatively remote locations with no major urban police or law enforcement resource available. In addition military personnel were used for security on all military base or facility visits - normally military police. As I recall the large operations file on the 112th the ARRB collected even discusses that and it should be required reading for this dialog in any event because it talks about what the MIG mission and roles were. It was the Secret Service's call....Vince probably knows but I don't recollect a military presence in either Miami or Tampa that fall, where there were major SS concerns (they called on the CIA for advance work in Miami). Its also worth noting that a Secret Service call for uniformed military would be different than a practice of using plain clothes military intelligence personnel since that would involve separate channels.

I think the following information needs to be added to this discussion - its from respected researcher Larry Haapanen who is not a member of the forum at this point but shared it with me today....the following is from his message: " A few years ago, as I pursued my practice of looking at reminiscences of 11/22/63 that have periodically appeared in newspapers and so forth) I ran across the follow from an interview with with one Jeff Wentworth from the San Antonio Express, 11/17/2013" "Judge Jeff Wentworth: I was living in Dallas on November 22, 1963, and saw President and Mrs. Kennedy riding in their open-air motorcade from Love Field to the parade route in downtown Dallas only minutes before Lee Harvey Oswald shot and killed the President. As a US Army officer at the time, my active duty military assignment was as a special agent/ counterintelligence officer at Region II HQs of the 112th Intelligence Corps Group based in Dallas. When my local Army commanding officer had earlier learned of the President's planned trip to Dallas, both he and the local commanding officer of our sister US Air Force contingent notified the Secret Service of the availability of approximately 40 active duty military personnel -- all of us federally trained in VIP protection -- to help with our Commander-in-Chief's security. The Secret Service declined the offer because, they said, the Secret Service and Dallas Police Department had everything under control." Jeff Wentworth served in the Texas House of Representatives from from 1988 to 1993. He then went on to serve in the Texas Senate from 1997 to 2013, and following that he was appointed a Justice of the Peace in Bexar County 1988. Personally I find that quite reasonable, especially given that advance Secret Service lead Lawson prepared an extensive report on his security preparations and that involved the DPD calling up police reserves and its own intelligence unit reserves (one of whom I interviewed on his duties that day yeas ago). Even offers from the Sheriff's office were refused as Lawson thought he had done an extensive job (it was his first advance) and the DPD support was sufficient. A routine rejection of the offer would would certainly explain complaints at headquarters after the fact - which appear to have been widespread. I found one individual who related her husband (a civilian contractor) had heard complaints in the base mess hall. It would also explain why someone made a complaint call to Fletcher Prouty. Of course it does not map to a sensational last minute "stand down", and is also totally out of line with Jones's statements (which I don't trust) of personnel being officially deployed. Of course having both a stand down and a deployment (that the local 112th was unaware of for that matter) is certainly inconsistent. All in all the remarks from Wentworth seem reasonable and consistent to me; as for Jones, a lot is wrong with his story and with his appearance which suppressed a very important area of investigation.

Paul, specifically in regard to your question on Col Jones, I don't know that military intelligence as a body did anything to obscure the truth - to have an opinion on that I would have to know the specific backstory about who called/supplied Jones as a witness. Its important to note that the real thrust of his appearance before the committee was in regard to questions about the mystery of unknown individuals in the plaza and behind the fence who showed government identification - a question which had a good deal of interest and was obviously an important one. In that regard Jones' statements that those individuals could very well have been 112th officers in plain clothes and on assignment effectively served to close down that line of inquiry. Whatever his motives might have been, or the motives of whoever invited him as a witness, his statements seem to have aborted further investigation of that question and that appears pretty suspicious to me given the information the ARRB later collected.

FBI and Reed slides...from original post here by Joe Backes https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=111185#relPageId=84&search=Stuart_Reed

Since Jim refers to me in his article, I will comment that anyone seriously interested in questions regarding the 112th and its activities in regard to Dallas should go to the effort of obtaining all the material collected by the ARRB in regard to the unit, including interviews with its members in Dallas as to their activities, and the interviews with other personnel at the unit's headquarters. Combine that with a read of the full ARRB interview with Prouty (which he voluntarily offered). Some of that material is available online, I published dozens and dozens of pages of it on CD many years ago to try to get it into broader circulation after I had gotten it the hard way from NARA. I would suggest that you also consider the internal ARRB memoranda (which were/are available) discussing their interview with Fletcher Prouty after the fact as well as their interviews and related documents pertaining to Jones' own testimony and the internal contradictions that occur with it (including his communications with the DPD on November 22). In other words, do the work, get the full suite of related documents relating to the 112th and draw your own conclusions. For reference, you can also find the my thoughts on the 112th MIG and its activities related to Dallas at the following link: https://gregwagnersite.files.wordpress.com/2019/11/mysteries-of-the-112.pdf

Given that he is breaking balloons inside an arena I'm not sure that is not something more like an old starter pistol type of ammunition - as you can imagine no military, paramilitary personnel much less a sniper class shooter is going to want to give away their firing position with that much smoke. Not that some weapons don't smoke but generally its not something you see in even in hunting or target shooting with either pistol or rifle - at least I certainly have not. Smell it, yes if there is enough shooting going on, see clouds of smoke, no.

Wow, Michael I don't know what those guys are using but I've been shooting for 50 plus years and have never seen that sort of visible smoke produced by any standard weapon and cartridges - I have an old twenty two which is mechanically loose and generates a lot of powder when you fire it but not visible smoke. Talk about giving away your position...

Another forum member thought he recalled Currey stating something about a "railroad torpedo" and he was correct. The following is part of his 1964 statement: Mr. CURRY. . . . we heard this first report, I couldn’t tell exactly where it was coming from. . . . I thought at first that perhaps this was a railroad torpedo... I said what was that, was that a firecracker, or someone said this, I don’t recall whether it was me or someone else, and from the report I couldn’t tell whether it was coming from the railroad yard or whether it was coming from behind but I said over the radio, I said, "Get someone up in the railroad yard and check." https://www.history-matters.com/analysis/witness/witnessMap/Curry.htm

Yes, Mike, the smoke was excessive for a weapon and from that position the wind would have carried it right down Elm street where gunpower type smoke was noted by several witnesses. Something like a squib used in railroad work for signaling would have done the trick and left little to no evidence.