Larry Hancock

Thanks Ben and I certainly acknowledge and admit to the "dense" writing - somewhat amazingly I'm back to Hernandez again, however many of them there were - and trailing one of them all the way from the first Cuba Project to Miami, Chicago, New Orleans and very possibly on to Dallas.

These days I am receiving my just desserts for the density of SWHT by being lead into deeper and more painful document dives by David Boylan.   Which means I suffer the same ongoing struggles and confusion I probably led my readers through. We follow the talk as best we can, corroborate when possible and put up scenarios.  I'm anxious for Rex to get the full 50 page or so monograph on Red Bird up on MFF so people can engage with some new ones, especially in regard to Oswald in the months following New Orleans.

In the meantime David is testing my gray cells with equally deep dives into further details of those same last three months,  from the Odio visit to how Oswald might have been introduced to Jack Ruby and who might have driven him to the border before his bus rides.  All wildly speculative,  but it keeps me off the streets and maybe diverts me from getting into more trouble closer to home - its sad to remember the days when I felt I could carry a clipboard with a Goldwater sticker - or later a McCarthy button - and not be at risk (well OK, the sticker got me into a fight and the button sent guys with bayonets our way) - but that's nothing to the threat of violence  I would be concerned about doing such things these days. 

Sorry Ben, that was a loose piece of copy on the message.   My thoughts are really quite simple and were in the previous message.  He had to make the call on whether each element of what he released was significantly important to break the law rather than trying to use the system, somehow feed it into the media piece by piece as an anonymous source or whether the urgency of the situation demanded he take the immediate and total initiative rather than exploring some other route.  When he decided to act as he did he accepted the risk and the probable punishment.  

I personally think he should have been more selective, exercised some sort of judgement and that the way he did it did damage national security - did the ultimate sentence fit the crime,  that's purely subjective. If I had a magic wand I would examine the situati8on in more detail - I don't claim to recall it all myself at this point - and probably wave that wand to commute it to some extent.  But I certainly would not have given him a total pass in the first place. 

From that point on we could settle back to a philosophical dialog that would last forever - as I said, I was offering a personal opinion, this should clarify the opinion and that's really all I have to say on Snowden, - which was really not the reason for my initial post in the first place.  I posted to express an opinion, to to take a position, did that, done.

Interesting question on the legal aspect Ben - I suppose my question would be whether or not the information was classified and how I obtained it.  

If it was  open source information certainly not.

If it was classified  information and I got it from a third party who was violating security laws and I made it public then I probably would position myself as a reporter or as a yellow journalist acting in the public interest - or feed to reporters who could use it and were willing to defend their sources.  But I would have to justify it as a risk.  

If I had personally made an effort to compromise secrecy,  recruited informants, hacked systems or used my own legitimate access then that is another story and I need to be willing to take my lumps if its worthwhile.  We had a lot of that during the Vietnam war and i respected the guys who did that, took their lumps and did their time. 

I still feel that way but I'm also quite aware that  nation states are adversaries and act and against each other using various levels of knowing and unknowing tools - I wrote about that in Creating Chaos.  

Bottom line,  I actually have a lot of sympathy for whistle blowers who are willing to expose those government sins and take the consequences and I would whole heartily endorse stronger protections for citizens who do so - making the system better and protecting them personally.  But I don't feel its wrong to prosecute people who knowingly break the law and admit to doing so. 

As to Snowden

...

Eddy,  as I recall RFK was indeed involved in the planning - whether directly or by having his staff participate (as Lamar's interview suggests).   Certainly RFK was very much aware of it - as well as being aware of JFK's desire not to let matters run away during a crisis and provoke a military reaction that would get out of control.  The missile crisis had a huge psychological effect on JFK and to a lesser extent RFK as both had seen how quickly things could go off the rails - for that matter so had the Sec of Defense,  which is why both RFK and Sec Def had gone to visit CINCLANT and directly ordered him not just to go by standard Navy practices but to refer any engagement decisions to the White House.

I'd have to go back and dig up what I wrote in SWHT to see if I found any further details but I suspect the contingency planning might have been discussed in some of the new Cuba Coordinating Committee meeting, just not sure about that.

As far as managing the autopsy itself,  I don't think RFK really did that as we now know he sighed off on a complete autopsy protocol.  My guess is that any involvement with materials from the autopsy may have occurred between Burkley and RFK after the fact.  I'm pretty sure I even speculated that may have been to preserve evidence in the event RFK was ever in the position to order a new inquiry into the assassination.

I'm afraid it is the same here, and because I do a good deal of volunteer work and live where I was born and grew up so I am known to a lot of folks.  I don't go out of my way to talk politics and tend to look for common ground on subjects - amazingly, Trump aside, there is a lot of that.   But I have become frustrated enough by the deep political agendas (such as the "plandemic" propaganda that put lives at risk even among my medically trained relatives) that on occasion I feel I have to at least take a personal stance.  Writing "Creating Chaos" taught me how even small groups or single players (not just nation states) can weaponize the media to terrible effect - I just wish more folks would have read it.

Lamar and I discussed this many years ago and I was actually able to find some documentation on the contingency planning and to the state it was in circa 1963.   It was primarily targeted on attacks occurring overseas but there was discussion beyond that anticipated the need to do media control to prevent overreaction - especially knee jerk military reaction which JFK and RFK were very concerned about following the missile crisis.

The planning involved setting up a special set of protocols, and began not long after the missile crisis, underway by early 1963.  Interestingly enough, due to the concerns that a perceived Cuban act would trigger it, the first person assigned to lead the effort was William Harvey.  This is actually documented in newspaper coverage.

If you have SWHT 2010 I cover this to the level I think we can actually document - unfortunately it appears the one group which had not been called in early on was the Secret Service, because of the concerns that the incidents would involve American diplomats or commercial figures overseas.   However I have often thought that some of the planning did drive certain of the very early "damage control / media containment" efforts

Certainly that is true Ty,  obviously there have always been strong feelings against sitting presidents - and strong language and even death threats...as with JFK.  But that was mostly over policies, and was not purely personal in most cases.  The last time I saw anything close to this was with the antiwar protests where high school teachers sent their students out in the street to beat up us college student commie protesters (maybe that's why I dislike broad brush terms so much?)

But I can say with the individuals I referred to its all personal, back to the "don't tread on me, I'll do what I want to and I have a gun" attitude.  Very, very personal and the ones I described do mean it about anyone who does not love Trump.  These are people I have observed not only fly Trump flags but fly them above the American flag.  They want a leader in the pure fascist sense - someone who will make everyone do what they want.

In a type of dark humor they are the ones at state level who want local control until some town or country does something they don't like and then they want new legislation or directives from the governor to force compliance with their view.

This also gives me an opportunity to state that I certainly acknowledge and have written about Deep Politics, about the power of special interests including Big Oil, Big Pharma, the MI/Political complex et al.   Such groups and interests always conspire for maximum control and power - no news there.  But they are also continually jousting for position, not in my view following any other long term master plan other than money, power and greed.  End of disclaimer.

Sorry Ben,  just gotta go on record as personally finding virtually all of that as laughable and in a pattern of creating a larger counter history of events....entertaining though it is for Deep State thinking.  And just to irritate everyone further, I agree with Liz Cheney in regard to Snowden and actually in regard to a great many things related to actually maintaining a democracy including the extreme threat posed by Trump and his acolytes. 

The idea that Trump even thought about records release for more than a minute when someone brought it up is more than unlikely, much less that he could be successfully blackmailed in regard to them. .  

Part of my New Years resolution to be totally transparent and contrarian at my advanced age.  Probably brought about by seeing too many vehicles around me with "F Biden and anyone who supports this presidency"  and "Trump is our Leader".

Greg, as someone who has researched and written basically about what Mowatt-Larssen has described for some three decades now myself, I would offer the following just as personal observations. 

First, I find it unhelpful to paint with broad brushes so just using the term CIA conspiracy leaves me as much as unfulfilled as referring to a Mafia conspiracy, a right wing conspiracy, a Deep Sate conspiracy, an Deep British world domination conspiracy or any of half a dozen more "conspiracies".   It just doesn't help me understand the crime at a level of detail I can describe well enough to test.  On the other hand Mowatt-Larssen's "rogue operators" concept does so I'm personally happier with that approach as a research tool.

Second, actually we know a good bit about true "CIA assassinations" which were conducted and actually documented inside the Agency.  They do show up in internal records, had to be funded and operationalized down a chain of command - and sometimes it was actually challenging and messy to do so, what we now understand about the efforts to eliminate Lemumba shows the CIA all over the board with half a dozen insiders and outsiders involved.  What Mowatt-Larssen describes starts further down the chain, can be hidden within regular budgets and does not get into the reporting channels - I wrote about operations like that in my book In Denial.

But to get back to Yates,  we do have enough detail to understand how the FBI closed out leads they didn't want to follow, usually by bringing in the concept of mental problems or mental impairment (we have several instances of that in the JFK conspiracy), quite literally to the point of driving some individuals into  depression and exacerbating medical problems they already had.  It was a standard FBI practice in writing off troublesome leads.

As to the CIA, certainly we know some officers, specifically in Staff D, had access to a variety of mind altering chemicals which were created for the use in interrogations, and for dirtier work in destabilizing targets just short of assassination. There is anecdotal information such drugs might have been used with Jack Ruby and I write about that in SWHT,  slipping drugs to Yates is possible  if that was really necessary - but I'm not sure it was if he was already having some psychological issues. 

But to actually explore whether it was pressure vs. drugs, you need to cut to a lower level of detail, you need scenarios involving names, departments, access, authorities, etc.  And you need to do one other thing which is decide whether the dismissal of the lead/witness was an extension of the actual conspiracy, part of the Bureau or Agency cover up of their own dirty laundry related to Oswald or part of a national security suppression operation coming down from the White House. 

Of course you can start with all three and reverse engineer it which is what I generally do, but I recommend examining each scenario if you are serious about any giving lead/witness and that includes Yates.  I think it might be worth the effort since the Yates incident very likely tells us something about the operational aspects of the attack in Dallas but also exposes how the dozens of loose ends that emerged from it failed to expose the conspiracy itself.

That's a new one on me Greg, actually I do not even recall when Oswald was interrogated on his date book?

I do believe he was briefly interviewed in NYC after his return, by CIA agents probably using coves.  Given how brilliantly CIA Domestic Ops approached him though DeMohrenschieldt in Dallas, its hard for me to see a direct contact where he would have even an alias, certainly not a true name.

Perhaps someone else will chime in on the Malone thing, no luck with me.

Ah Tosh Plumlee appears again to totally muddy the waters with his creation of the Illusionary Warfare Center - its just sad that Tosh has sucked so many people into his own illusions over the years.  I've been through all that here and in other venues since my first exchanges with him on Compuserve, our emails over those years and my contacts with his daughter.  No need to revisit it here, I'll just offer my assessment/opinion that his information is yet one more diversion from the truth and leave it at that - I do have his own document trail of check kiting, FBI outreach and other entertaining things to fall back on as being the true part of his history.

Ron, I'm working on understanding the timing of this myself - we need to consider all Oswald's calls and how they were handled as Greg outlined earlier.  Almost all were carried out according to legal DPD protocol,  although I'm not sure they were not all listened to and reported on - somebody needs to look at the calls to Abt, to Ruth etc to make a call on that to see if monitoring was SOP, should have been reports to that effect internally if so, copied to FBI.

We assume this one session was a major exception, which started out according to protocol, was even recorded but somehow was internally blocked, with information collected from Oswald via the Operator but never reported internally as part of the investigation or to FBI as would have been expected.

The two officers - or the two FBI agents - had to have some real authority to do that - either from within DPD if they were police violating procedure or with a head nod from a senior DPD officer if they were outsiders, say FBI.  And we also need to be cautious about taking it further than necessary.  I say that because we know that almost immediately the FBI SAIC had given an order to flush a note from Oswald, he would later authorize removing and replacing a page in his notebook suggesting an FBI contact.  We also know that upon his arrest in New Orleans Oswald in custody had requested to meet with the FBI and we now know that was with a particular FBI agent on the subversive desk.

If Oswald was acting as a source very possibly only the Dallas SAIC would have had that information, and if so his first fear might be a phone call from Oswald himself.....under duress and wanting to report.  In that event pure panic might have driven a request from SAIC (even without Hoover) to DPD to let his people take charge the next time Oswald asked to make a call.  If that was the case of course no report would be made.

I only offer this because I don't think we appreciate how much panic Oswald's arrest may have caused within the FBI, in the Dallas and New Orleans offices in particular.  Destroying evidence and apparently files in New Orleans certainly suggests the kind of behavior we see in blocking this Oswald call.

Ron, I'm working on understanding the timing of this myself - we need to consider all Oswald's calls and how they were handled as Greg outlined earlier.  Almost all were carried out according to legal DPD protocol,  although I'm not sure they were not all listened to and reported on - somebody needs to look at the calls to Abt, to Ruth etc to make a call on that to see if monitoring was SOP, should have been reports to that effect internally if so, copied to FBI.

We assume this one session was a major exception, which started out according to protocol, was even recorded but somehow was internally blocked, with information collected from Oswald via the Operator but never reported internally as part of the investigation or to FBI as would have been expected.

The two officers - or the two FBI agents - had to have some real authority to do that - either from within DPD if they were police violating procedure or with a head nod from a senior DPD officer if they were outsiders, say FBI.  And we also need to be cautious about taking it further than necessary.  I say that because we know that almost immediately the FBI SAIC had given an order to flush a note from Oswald, he would later authorize removing and replacing a page in his notebook suggesting an FBI contact.  We also know that upon his arrest in New Orleans Oswald in custody had requested to meet with the FBI and we now know that was with a particular FBI agent on the subversive desk.

If Oswald was acting as a source very possibly only the Dallas SAIC would have had that information, and if so his first fear might be a phone call from Oswald himself.....under duress and wanting to report.  In that event pure panic might have driven a request from SAIC (even without Hoover) to DPD to let his people take charge the next time Oswald asked to make a call.  If that was the case of course no report would be made.

I only offer this because I don't think we appreciate how much panic Oswald's arrest may have caused within the FBI, in the Dallas and New Orleans offices in particular.  Destroying evidence and apparently files in New Orleans certainly suggests the kind of behavior we see in blocking this Oswald call.

Over the years a couple of things about the investigation have gotten my attention....starting with a remark from a very early researcher who was talking to an FBI agent about what he did in the investigation.  His reply was that their orders were to pursue everything that would build a case around Oswald as the shooter, and that was it.  If you went off the reservation and started looking for leads for others it was made clear that was not your job.

That tracks perfectly to the order Hoover issued changing the FBI investigation from open ended to closed on Saturday morning.   Ditto the order to create a report outlining his sole responsibility that was given Sunday afternoon.

The thing is we know that FBI and even CIA agents (WAVE started an internal investigation of possible anti-Castro Cuban involvement and apparently prepared a report that disappeared). did initiate inquiries looking for leads to others and even conspiracy.  Hoover was very hot about a Castro conspiracy for a time.  But all that lasted for a relatively short period of time and then the push back started.  We know that other evidence disappeared at DPD as well.

What makes this call stand out is how quickly somebody stepped in with some real concern that Oswald might know someone or somebody that would become unmanageable.  How those two men got that type of access at DPD is a real story that would tell us a lot.

Oh, and for those really serious Oswald researchers, given that Camp LaJune is not all that far from Raleigh, it might be interesting to see if the name Hurt shows up anywhere related to Oswald's time in the Marine Corps...

As far as I can tell from Greg's post the approval of that calls as with the other calls Oswald requested was standard protocol for DPD, they had practices in place to log them and it would have looked strange to flatly have refused the calls - something that Oswald could have complained about to the press. 

Oswald was going to get to make calls, and made several.  The problem very early appears to have been that someone suspected he might make a call that would be embarrassing or damaging in some fashion.  Hence a legitimate call was simulated, but with instructions for it not to be connected so Oswald would not know what was happening.  If it was a "help me" call he would think he had been had, given a useless contact. 

Equally important such an early call should have been intensely investigated, it appears it was not, but that blocking it rather than using it was the objective.

I'll be interested in Greg's take but it looks to me like somebody was very worried about who Oswald might try to call and suppressed the way the call was handled....then when an inquiry was made they tried to remove the whole thing from the record.

Eddy,  based on Greg's posts it would seem Oswald provided a name and city for the operator to search and she came back with two numbers.  Oswald had apparently picked  up the Abt name from reading,  its possible he may have picked up "John Hunt" and a Raleigh address from reading as well or he may have been given that name and city.   Cut out practice as I've seen it involves a telephone number and not necessarily a name, certainly not a city, but of course we can't know for sure.

Greg's last post captures what I think is the more important point.  It appears that at the point in time the FBI was essentially taking over the case, two men, either FBI agents or DPD officers responded to Oswald's request to make a call by taking over and making sure whatever name or number he used was blocked by the illegal action of the operator - being told not to actually make the call and to tell Oswald the number/s were busy. 

Oswald apparently did request to make the call via standard DPD practice but what followed was surely not and the two men, either DPD or FBI, made no internal report of the name or number that we know of from the records.  Much later the record of the call itself was clumsily removed ad Greg pointed out.

I think Greg's last post captures it well.....at a point in time where the decision had been made at the highest level to close down the investigation to Oswald alone, someone carried out part of that by blocking his attempt to make a call and to not investigate that call itself.  To me that says that the fear was that Oswald did indeed have a contact, a number, something that would link him to either the FBI or intelligence community if he made an emergency call and it was investigated.  They may not have known who he would call but they surely did not want to have it happen and go on the record. 

That surely is not standard practice and my best guess is that it, like the destruction of the Oswald note to the local FBI office, was a panic that Oswald's connection to the FBI or CIA might be exposed - well after the fact there was an effort to cover up that early decision simply because of its implications.  We may never know exactly who John Hurt was (or even if the operator herd the name correctly) but simply based on the blocking of the call we have a pretty strong indication that Oswald's history was  indeed "poisoning" the investigation even at that early point in time. 

Ouch, so basically Oswald had a name -  John Hurt - and a city - Raleigh - that he thought was important enough to call for help at the same time he was reaching out to a lawyer he had only read about.  He got two numbers, in Raleigh, for that name - both of which he failed to reach because the operator was told not to connect him....which seems the last thing to do in a real investigation.  In fact its 180 degrees out of police practice so who told the officers to do that?

We have two John Hurt's in Raleigh, one a former WWII Army CI officer.

We also have John Hart, a long time CIA staff officer, who did work Cuban operations during the period in question but with no obvious connection to Oswald and certainly someone with the experience not to be sharing his true name.

Then again maybe we are missing the real point in all of this, and those calls were being handled under standard procedure, logged, placed, connections actually made. Yet at one particular point in time, somebody seems to have been worried enough that Oswald was going to make a certain call, that procedures were violated, the call was illegally blocked - violating his rights but also breaking standard practice in any high profile security case of passing on an opportunity to connect and trace leads. .

And later, when someone questioned that call, records relating to it went literally missing.

So at that point in time, why was somebody worried enough about a call Oswald would make that they blocked it rather than investigating - and later covered that up by apparent destruction of records.  

So who contacted DPD at that point in time and told them to block Oswald's next call attempt, whoever it might be too....regardless of John Hurt and Raleigh, who had that leverage and that concern about who just who Oswald might call next.?

 So Oswald had somewhere not only heard of Ana Drittel,  the Russian emigre and fluent Russian speaker, but knew her husband by a different name and was trying to contact her through him - truly a desperation call unless there was something more significant about her.  Could you elaborate a bit on any scenario as to how he might known her or have heard of her.  I read your previous mention of her but wasn't sure I was following it well enough to comprehend.

In that event it was a hail Mary call - and the FBI either dropped the ball or didn't know about the call...and then expunged it to wipe out even more evidence that they had been either inept or were intentionally trying to avoid connecting Oswald to people?

Or is there any sign at all that Drittel might have been either an FBI asset or a CIA asset or source herself....especially given her husband's background?

That is wild speculation but if true it would surely explain why the history of that call would need to be made to vanish.

I'm certainly inclined to think the call happened, that it was not anticipated and things were written down that later had to be eliminated.   If you would though, please set me clear on this -  did Oswald give numbers to the operator and get a name or did he give a name and get numbers from the operator?  I tend to get lost easily.

Now to wild speculation -  so Oswald did have an number that he had been given to use if he were ever arrested by the police and needed help getting out of custody.  We tend to think of that as the sort of thing you get from the CIA but the same thing could happen with an FBI source who has provided information and is considered useful.  Its possible Oswald was given such a number when in New Orleans and if so it would have been a local field office decision since they ran their own sources.  Oswald might just have kept the number. 

The same could be true and he was given the name by a CIA case officer at some point.   A number from either agency would not necessarily relate to a conspiracy but would confirm that he was a source for that agency and affiliated with them in some fashion - something they would both want to suppress.

My thought is that in the chaos of events nobody knew Oswald had an emergency number nor anticipated that he would use it - the DPD did what it routinely did and since no connection was made felt they had nothing to report.  However when the call became known somebody went back to DPD and clumsily made it go away well after the fact.  That could have been doen through channels or frankly even by having an agency contact within the Department.

Which of course goes back to the question of why certain reports did rather clumsily go missing after the fact - making DPD look stupid and inept. 

In the interim I'd say it looks like Oswald had either a real name and real location or perhaps just a real number and he used it,  perhaps nobody even knew that immediately but after the fact they had to make it go away.

What continues to stand out in all this is the apparent lack of involvement by the FBI and for that matter the lack of DPD reporting to the FBI.  Just about anything anyone could imagine about Oswald was being investigated by the Bureau, as would be expected. The DPD itself appears to have continued to investigate the shooting per se for at least 24 hours or so but the FBI was totally focused on Oswald as of Saturday morning - and if the DPD did not have a tape recorder handy, well the FBI did.  How in the world was the FBI not following up on, monitoring and investigating any of Oswald's calls ? 

For that matter why was the DPD not doing the same or at least proactively reporting them to the FBI.

And as you note, apparently neither was if the FBI had an agent had to go back and make an inquiry as late as August 64.

A third party intervening and "blocking" a call from Oswald certainly would be possible...blocking it at the receiving end seems most likely.  Blocking it outgoing in Dallas is another story entirely, with a lot of questions that would have to be answered to intervene at the level of the jail. 

Certainly the name and numbers in the call are interesting but the apparent lack of involvement by the FBI with his calls is equally so to me.  Especially given their level of obsessiveness in investigating everything and anything about Oswald.   

I'm still perplexed by things about the call itself.   First if it was the standard "you get one call, better make it family or your lawyer" , that authorization would come from the DPD as it appears to, and they appear to have tapped it.  So where is the DPD report on the call,  that is a real problem and its hard to see it as an oversight.   Second, its also hard to see the FBI not being interested and being advised and participating in the tap.  For that matter anybody in their right minds would have had a tape recorder on the line being tapped, not just listening in on the call. Even if the call were negative I would expect a tape of the conversation with the operator, a DPD report on the call itself even if fruitless and a copy of the report to the FBI....who would immediately follow up and do their own investigation of any names and numbers or even locations - given the obsessiveness of their Oswald investigation I'd expect reports on that out of the local field office for Raleigh, interviews with anybody in town with that name etc. 

This was not a little incident and should have driven multiple reports and inquiries even if Oswald talked to nobody.  Once again we are left with the DPD either being immensely inept or its just one more report like the one with the list of theater people, the list of cars and license plate numbers from the TSBD parking lot and even the CSI bullet strike report on the other side of Elm that all appear to have vanished.  In each case we know something happened from other reports - how terrifically sloppy is it that the reports themselves go missing.

Not sure I can add much more on this,  I only know of one real world instance where someone who had been assisting the CIA was given an emergency number (number only, no name), used it and got no response at all in the call.   Later he did receive assistance but in a very round about way.    Given the fact that any such contact number would be extremely deniable I can't see it being given out with any true name associated with any individual provably in the CIA and even someone associated with the intelligence community would be a stretch.

Beyond that, CIA officers outside those in senior, public positions could not be denied simply did not use their true names in operations.  They routinely used aliases, some officially assigned, some not.  This was especially true when inside the U.S.  Phillips was arrested and convicted of check kiting in a strange situation inside the U.S. because he was carrying only alias level identification (pocket litter).  To see an experienced officer give out a true, agency related name to a low level asset of any sort is strange, to give it out for "emergency" use even stranger since that exposes both the individual and the agency itself - and even if an emergency is not the factor, it gives the asset leverage over the officer by exposing his identity and affiliation.  

That is simply for what its worth,  the trick would be to factor in a relatively high staff officer who was in the original Cuba project circa 1960 into a contact with Oswald where Oswald has both his true name and a telephone number he belives will get to him directly in an emergency. 

The obituary certainly gives the impression of a career staff person, that matches his statement about not being a career "agent", his involvement with the Cuba project would suggest he might even have taken over from Harvey during the transition from Harvey to Fitzgerald....would seem that he would have been at HQ and not in Miami circa 63.  

On the other hand it appears that he was running CI personnel in Vietnam and going out in the field to do so - although that could also have included Vietnamese security personnel.

For terminology purposes its always good to note that the FBI has agents while the CIA has "officers".....and the CIA uses lots people not on the personnel roles in pursuit of deniability.    They also rigorously deny employment of many who actually are on the personnel roles. 

A quick scan of documents shows that Cheever was on staff in the initial Cuba project and was Harvey's Deputy on Task Force W - he speaks of working under Harvey.

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=148784#relPageId=3&search=Bruce_Cheever

It appears he stayed in the same "shop" after the missile crisis and thought of it as a continuation of Task Force W even after Harvey left.  The documents confirm that as he continued to attend Special Group meetings through 1963, however his new position was the Acting Chief of Special Affairs Staff - which was headed by Fitzgerald.

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=189164#relPageId=17&search=Bruce_Cheever

We get some detail on John Hart here:

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=81#relPageId=491&search=John_Hart

and he objects to being described as a "career agent" even though he served with the CIA for 24 years and was called back apparently to do an internal investigation of the Nosenko affair.  

Finding what he was doing earlier in his career seems beyond the quick scan so I hope someone takes this further.

Greg, about all I can say is that some members of the Task Force W team most likely carried on their duties under the new SAS group under Fitzgerald and in doing so perhaps continued to use the same terminology as they had previously.  Fitzgerald was most definitely in charge of SAS and of Cuban operations during 1963 and onward.....perhaps David B. can find some sign of Hart or Cheever in the SAS / Fitzgerald documents.  These organizational structured are described in the Tipping Point which trys to capture the transition at the higher level between Mongoose and the Cuban Coordinating Committee as well as between Task Force W under Harvey and SAS under Fitzgerald.

There is no doubt about that, extensive documents support it.   Now at some internal level did something continued to be talked about as Task Force W during 1963 - perhaps, but if so we need to locate it and verify it......right now Weatherby's statement stands strictly by itself as far as I know.  Definitely a point that deserves some research - some MFF searches on those two names as well as Task Force W would be a good start.