Larry Hancock

If you have read or intend to read Tipping Point, one of the things you are going to come across is that it contains considerable detail on several areas which you may not be familiar with from other JFK assassination writing. One example, courtesy of David Boylan's research, is an examination of the organizational structure of the CIA's JMWAVE station in Miami and its 1963 staffing relationship/connections to Desmond Fitzgerald's Special Affairs Staff. SAS was tasked with carrying on covert Kennedy Administration action against Cuba as the successor to Mongoose - ostensibly operating only under the oversight and direction of the new, higher level Cuban Coordinating Committee. Other examples of "deep dives" include an exploration of the DRE (Cuban Student Directorate) and its activities in 1963 as well as the relatively little discussed Commando Mambises covert maritime operations against Cuba in 1963. Readers familiar with my other books on the subject may deal with the complexity of names and cryptonyms by using the extensive end notes and citations in the book. However any serious reader, plus anyone who wants to use the book for further research of their own, will likely want to have reference to as through an index as possible. We did have a basic index available for the book but admittedly it was limited. The good news is that - thanks to some very dedicated volunteer work and several months of slogging - we can now offer a greatly expanded Tipping Point Index. You will find it in the Tipping Point area on the Mary Ferrell Foundation and it is available for download. I hope you find it helpful and for those who may still wonder what is in Tipping Point, it might give you a much better view to that. As a reminder, its only useful with the actual paginated, published book. And if you take a look and decide to use it I would certainly be interested in your feedback: https://www.maryferrell.org/pages/Tipping_Point.html

Thanks Jim, we are also pleased to have some UK presenters in addition to Bart and Malcolm - as well as to be able to bring in Gil Jesus from this forum. This year was extremely challenging with the web hosting problems and in particular Gabriella needs to be given huge credit for all the work in the trenches putting it together. Especially as she also works a full time day job of about ten hours a day. We appreciate all the presenters being so cooperative with their recording times given the challenges of her schedule.

Thanks Danny, we are really pleased with the breadth this year as speakers will not only cover history and research, but there will be updates on document releases, legislation, and what is going on in contemporary activities. I'm also happy that Bart Kamp will be able to give some extended views into the archival of Malcolm Blunt's extensive document collections. That in itself will represent a new venue for many, Malcolm has been a great personal resources for several of us over the decades, but now everybody will be able to benefit from his slogging away at the national archives all these many years.

Conference details and tentative speaker schedule: Sessions will be streamed Friday and Saturday beginning at 9 AM Central and Sunday at Noon Central on November 19-21 The conference will be “virtual” with presentations streamed during the conference dates, and with a dedicated Facebook page for registered attendees to ask questions and participate in dialogs with presenters. The fee will be $64.99 for conference viewing only, and $119.99 for conference viewing plus digital download. All ticketed attendees will have the ability to re watch any presentation as often as they want until the 30th of November. Reservations may be made at: https://jfklancerpublications.com/?fbclid=IwAR0MYMd_B2oq_oRZRd0mLlXFa7txmrDJblVzitni8uEgyw4RCP4N0XYHlV0 Speaker Schedule / Subject to Change Friday, November 19: Debra Conway Don Jefferies with Chuck Ochelli Bart Kamp with Malcolm Blunt (two part) Larry Schnapf Stuart Wexler Brent Holland Saturday, November 20: Debra Conway Russ Baker Bill Simpich Johnny Cairns Larry Hancock and David Boylan (two part) Gill Jesus Andrew Kiel Bill Kelly Sunday, November 21 Debra Conway Robert Groden Jim DiEugenio Mike Chesser

Ron, the photos show Craig looking up the street towards the Rambler - but as I recall he was actually responding to a loud whistle that got his attention, not totally focused on the man, the car or any special suspicions at the time. What is probably more important is that he did report the incident and there is a video of his chief being interviewed about "Oswald" getting into the car and departing the scene - yet there is no sign that was ever really investigated, that the Rambler (reported by at least two and perhaps three more people picking up someone) was searched for or investigated. Its one more example of leads that suggested conspiracy just being tossed. Also, I did some early photo work on this and others had cone far more but there is a picture which shows two men coming down the hill towards the location of the rambler "pick up" and one does resemble Oswald. The men are walking hurriedly down towards the street at the time. Just one more item suggesting we really have no idea of exactly what was happening at that time regardless of all the research that has been done.

Yes, that would be Hal Hendrix. If you have SWHT you will find a discussion of Hendrix in the chapter on David Phillips...

I wanted to advise everyone that we now have a registration page up for the JFK Lancer 2021 Conference - you will find it at: https://jfklancerpublications.com/ Note the new domain name for JFK Lancer - as I noted before Debra is going to have to move to a new host and initially recreate a Lancer Web site. That is obviously going to take some time but as I said, the conference itself will stream separately as well as have its own attendee Facebook page so the domain and web site change is not a problem for the conference itself. I had also gotten a comment on my own blog about missing the guided walking tours of the Plaza that we had done over the years. As it so happens Gabriella and I recorded and extended video of that walking tour last year, unfortunately we had some problems getting it posted on Facebook but this year she has new video editing software and we are certainly going to try to make that available for the attendees. The good news is that it would not involve the rain or sleet or cold wind we sometimes ran into in November in the "live" tours. As a reminder, this years scheduled speakers include: Scheduled presenters at this time include Jim DiEugenio, David Boylan, Donald Jeffries with Chuck Ochelli, Larry Schnapf, Mike Chesser, Bill Simpich, Andrew Kiel, Debra Conway, Larry Hancock, Stuart Wexler, Malcolm Blunt, Bill Kelly, Russ Baker, Gill Jesus, Robert Groden, and Brent Holland.

Thanks John, I was really only trying to draw the distinction because with one time event witnesses its even more challenging as there is no real change for "learning" at the time - however "learning" does occur after the incident - from other sources - and that makes trusting witnesses well after the fact even more challenging. First off in the event of a crime or accident they get personally engaged so that distracts them, then you have the retention problem with what little they pick up and finally the "false learning" that they pick up afterwards. Which is why if you take witness reports its really important to get it down within hours and before they begin talking to people.

In the classroom It's not necessarily all about "retention", its also about learning - John noted the need to develop several ways to present information to encourage retention. Decades ago in my education and training courses it was emphasized that it was mandatory to present material in multiple ways because students are individuals and they simply don't engage with information in the same ways. We were required to build lessons plans with multiple ways to present (five column plans for that matter). That even held in my Air Force instructor training. If you get lucky you hit on some way to express it or demonstrate it in a way that at least gets a few to engage enough to get it - and perhaps even retain it - more engagement equals more retention. All of which makes matters worse when relying on witnesses who only had one brief shot to capture anything, flesh what they did get (often unknowingly) with conversations after the fact, reading or viewing media, giving testimony, responding to questions, etc. To think that you can come back later and confirm more than a minimal set of observations is quite well documented - as Gil brought out above.

Thanks Benjamin, the website is still a work in progress, should be very close but it seems like something new turns up every day... In some ways virtual conferences are easier to organize but in other respects it just seems to spread the last minute stress out over a longer time...grin. I am particularly looking forward to it as a forum for people to share new research and we are particularly happy to have Gil Jusus join us this year given how busy he has been on the forum and his web site in recent months. Jim's insights into the Stone documentary should be really welcome and the review of Malcolm Blunt's new archives will be very important.

The web site thing has been immensely frustrating and chewed up a lot of time and mental energy for Deb, its about the strangest thing I have ever seen. I stay in touch with Bill but I think he spends most of his time communicating via his blog. As to James Richards, several of us have tried various means to contact him over the past year but with no success. He had a unique collection of photos and some equally unique contacts in Miami that were always way beyond me. We communicated literally for years, but I've had no responses from him for some time now. Interestingly enough I'm still working one of the leads (and photos) he gave me something like two decades ago...amazing.

JFK Lancer will host its 2021 annual conference November 19-21. The conference will again be “virtual” with presentations streamed during the conference dates and with a dedicated Facebook page for registered attendees to ask questions and participate in dialogs with presenters. The feel will be $64.99 for conference viewing only and $119.99 for conference viewing plus digital download. Scheduled presenters at this time include Jim DiEugenio, David Boylan, Donald Jeffries with Chuck Ochelli, Larry Schnapf, Mike Chesser, Bill Simpich, Andrew Kiel, Debra Conway, Larry Hancock, Stuart Wexler, Malcolm Blunt, Bill Kelly, Russ Baker, Gill Jesus, Robert Groden, and Brent Holland. Other presenters have been invited but have not yet committed as of this date. As I understand from Debra Conway, something like three weeks ago Lancer’s web host removed the JFK Lancer web site from the host server without any notification. Initially it appeared that would be quickly corrected and the Lancer home page was shown as being under construction. Then the hosting company loaded pages from 2019 and that totally confused matters for those going to the site address. Its a long three weeks for Debra, which I'm not going to attempt to describe in any detail, but the result is that she is now working on the creation of a new site under a new domain name and and should be available very shortly. That site will provide the access to register for the 2021 conference. Work on the conference itself is well under way and proceeding on schedule - the conference itself will be streamed independently. Apologies for any confusion, its been a pretty bad experience for Debra. I will provide further updates here but if possible please share with others that the 2021 conference itself is indeed alive, well and proceeding towards November.

Micah, unfortunately Lancer's web host first took down their server with no notice, then put up the wrong pages and after over three weeks have yet to restore it. The site may have to be moved to a new host and may even have to have a new domain name. It's a nightmare at the moment. The 2021 conference is well underway and will be held on schedule in November but the issues with the Web site have been distressing for Debra and that struggle is still underway. I will be posting separately on the 2021 conference and advise on progress with the site. Unfortunately the story from her web host has changed almost daily over the last weeks...a literal nightmare.

Ron, I know that I did comment on the possibility of Oswald getting rid of his rifle some time before the assassination and other parties using it to frame him but that's as far as I would go. I'm very well aware of David's article on the official story of the issues with the rifle purchase, but I will straight up say that any plan to kill the President of the United States which relies on the sole proof of "framing" a "lone nut" with the ownership of a weapon that associates that individual with the weapon by being contrived by the FBI totally after the fact makes no sense to me at all. Especially when it leaves all the loose ends with the purchase and delivery issue that David and others point out. Especially if you accept a plan leaving all those loose ends to be part of a highly efficient and even professional assassination. The thing is (as we often complain about) that if you discount a rifle owned by Oswald and you can't connect Oswald to either the rifle or the ammunition used, there is no evidentiary "frame" in place at all at the time of the shooting. The best you have is a guy working in the building who has been to Russia and protested in favor of the Castro regime. Pretty darn weak. Given that, the only option I could see would be that nobody really worked on seriously framing Oswald with any evidence, at best they left a rifle and some hulls in the TSBD and after the fact the FBI and all involved in a cover up contrived the evidence to frame Oswald out of whole cloth. I could even accept that as possible since I posit that the damage control/cover up was almost entirely built in a helter skelter fashion after the fact. For me it could go either way - Oswald did have a rifle and somebody framed him with it at the time of the shooting - or he didn't and he was totally framed with a sloppy evidence trail after the fact. Unfortunately choosing between the two is not a lot easier for me now than it ever has been.

Jim, you might want to pass that reference on to Bill Simpich, as I recall he put up that particular crypt onto the site.

It should be noted that RX is not among the standard crypt bigrams listed in the Mary Ferrell Foundation overview,and the purported crypt itself is described as "alleged" - from the Wilcott testimony. The crypt itself is noted as "contested" and its status as "speculative", indicating that no documents or other sources have been found to support it. It is referenced among the cryptonyms because it is in the literature and people may be curious about it. The presentation text gives an objective view as to its source and level of verification.

In regard to Prouty, David was good enough to come up with the document I was referring to, and yes Prouty was strictly an Air Force contact (Air Force Office of Special Operations) for the Cuba Project. His involvement had to do with acquiring aircraft for the Cuba Project. The early 1961 document discussing that can be found here: https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=146516#relPageId=70

On Anthony's question, there are documents reflecting that SAS Counter Intelligence at JMWAVE was using AMOTS and the Cuban Intelligence service not only in Florida but in New Orleans and in Mexico City. For that matter one DRE case officer (William Kent) actually too up residence in New Orleans for a time (you will find details on that in Tipping Point as well as some document references on Kent). I don't recall any specific reference to SAS or AMOT activity in Dallas - although its possible if SAS (or the DRE) was following Oswald after New Orleans. If that were true it would be in documents either already destroyed or in those that Moreley has been fighting for in court. Beyond that, the SAS and the AMOTS were active in New York city in regard to Cuban diplomats at the U.N. but I don't recall seeing any activities outside Florida, New Orleans, Mexico City and NYC.

We ran into the reference to Prouty and his support (or CIA project officer griping about lack thereof) for the Cuba project circa late 60, early 61. Hopefully David Boylan can produce the document with some slogging, since he found it in the first place. I looked and did not find a specific reference in the book but I may have missed it. We are working on an expanded index but that's still upcoming. I did trace the timing on his career with SACSA in Shadow Warrior but don't normally try to give exact dates from memory. It is certainly possible he may have simply been working for the Air Force in regard to responding to Cuba Project requests...which may have been in regard to getting additional B-26's in the last months when they were still woefully short of aircraft, but that's just one possibility. I don't recall it having anything to do with the Navy or ships though because CIA officers were working directly with the Navy itself on that.

I don't know that Prouty was involved with sourcing the Barbara J, it had been formerly a Navy vessel. The Houston came from Garcia Lines. The history of both ships is found in detail in the records pertaining to the Cuba Project - and is cited in my book In Denial. It would be nice to see someone go back to source documents I referenced. As I've mentioned before, we did find some minor reference to Prouty in documents related to the project, primarily in the form of complaints about his responsiveness.

That should be interesting Matt, I interviewed a Navy crewman who was offshore on the aircraft carrier Essex, he was very helpful in confirming several points but as with most of those who participated in the operation, he had no idea of the rules of engagement, restraints, and directives that JFK had issued - which were not complied with by either Bissell or CINCLANT who was giving orders in regard to the Navy participation. Of course that also likely explains why the Essex comm logs and other mission logs were actually destroyed on board before the carrier ever left the area. Another JFK directive was that if the force was detected during the landings or engaged at all, the landings should abort and fall back to a plan to land elsewhere. There is no indication such a plan was ever prepared and of course the landing was engaged by Cuban forces from the very beginning. I found no sign that there were ever any orders issued or plans made for that contingency. Another was that the Brigade leaders were to be directly told that there would no condition would American military forces would be committed for any reason, there would be no American military support of any sort, air or sea. The records state they were so briefed, but neither the officers with the Brigade itself nor the Brigade members appear to have have received that message - and were clearly expected something much different, which is why they have always felt so abandoned. However be prepared for the response that the the entire operation was an exercise in futility and could never have succeeded without overtly committing the American military. There is certainly an argument for that - what you have to be prepared for is that the CIA led everyone to think there would be a major on island uprising going on in conjunction with it and totally managed to duck that point in the final weeks and in the after action assessments. Strangely is was a CIA historian who called that out most aggressively, years after the fact. Unless you dig into what a two faced game Bissell played, how totally useless and ineffectual Cabell was, and how JC King was even worse, its hard to appreciate how JFK could have let it go forward. The thing is that it was not just his trust in Dulles that was misplaced, it was an inherent weakness and incompetence up and down the high level chain of command for the operation. Which of course is why the actual IG report on the failure - which explicitly called that out - was suppressed and Bissell allowed to write his own version...

Yes, its all in Chapters 1-7, of In Denial. The reason I spent so much time on it as related to a broader book on deniable operations is that we now literally know more about the Eisenhower and Kennedy phases of the Cuba project that virtually any other deniable operation - and it is heavily documented, including the post postmortems that officially concluded that the CIA should never again be tasked with large scale covert military operations. A decision Johnson almost immediately discarded in SE Asia, in particular in Laos. The three transports I was referring to, the Houston, Caribe and Atlantico were all essentially loaned to the CIA by the owner of the Garcia Lines, Eduardo Garcia. The two landing ship infantry (LCI) utility craft, the Blagar and Barbara J, had been purchased from the Navy - long story there - and were crewed by personnel from the Military Sea Transportation Service, civilians as were the boat's Captains. Those two craft carried Robertson and Lynch respectively, who were not supposed to stay in the vicinity of the landing after the first night, but who were actually served liaison to the Cuban Brigade onshore (which ended up with no radio connection to its base and actually never had any radio links to the Brigade Air Unit - a total fiasco in itself). Documents and source are available on all this and are cited. To be clear though, the Garcia Line ships were volunteered by their owner, their crews and captains were not volunteers for combat nor part of the Brigade, they were simply given a choice of sailing on with their ships or going into CIA sequestration for the duration...whatever that was going to be. Certainly they were never told they would be going to be the subject of ongoing air strikes. As to the shocking part, well its not like the source material I used is not in the public domain, if you dig for it like I did. However aside from one or two general historical tomes (which do not consolidate materials) there has been no general discussion of what emerged over the last few decades. Every anniversary the same old JFK failure/guilt story is just trotted out again. And certainly none of it contains some of the unique material I manged to dig up including the plans for major American Navy air strikes which JFK was not told about or the true "false flag" attack against Guantanamo which was being set up. There is no sign that either came up in the follow on inquiries or that he was briefed on either by Bissell and Admiral Berkley. My books and my small publisher's efforts just don't have the traction to penetrate the historical dialog, unfortunately we didn't even manage to get In Denial reviewed by the major outlets like Library Journal and it has made it into no libraries at all, unlike most of my other national security books.

What we now know about the overall Cuba Project, about the Bay of Pigs and about how JFK was intentionally and falsely blamed for the disaster is incredible - yet its never going to get any historical traction. Too late and the fake story was too well planted and reinforced by Bissell and some of the others who actually bore the blame at the time. Its very frustrating to have come up with a new and more accurate picture and not be able to make any impact with it.

Most definitely, the ships were brought into port in New Orleans, the crews were told the boats were going to be used as transports and loaded with ammunition, supplies etc for the landings. Those that did not immediately volunteer to give up their jobs and go along with the plan were sequestered by the CIA for the duration - locked up. Of course they were told the risk would be minimal...which is indeed what had been called for in the plan. JFK himself had ordered that the landing be developed so all ships involved in the landings would be at sea out of Cuban territorial waters by daylight, under Navy protection. In reality, that was never possible given the tanks, heavy weapons and amount of ammunition and supplies that had to be landed and the ships came under air attack at daylight. Long story short, the ships were civilian freighters with civilian officers and crew with no combat experience, the net result was that after coming under attack and with the loss of the ammunition supply ship the others literally fled out to sea - and when an effort was made to go transfer their loads for landing the the next night they were still being rounded up by the Navy and essentially forced back. The boat resupply never worked. Supporting an amphibious operation with civilian ships and crews who had never really volunteered for any military action was a major error - but even the two command ships that carried Lynch and Robertson were crewed by civilians and captained by civilians. They were much better prepared for what was going to happen and stood strong but if they had not, or if the tow CIA officers had not decided to stay engaged, their would not even have been the minimal coordination with the Cuban forces on the beach that there was. Its a much longer, nastier and tragic story....painful in fact. And JFK ended up holding the bag for Bissell's failures and Bissell himself lied to all and sundry blaming it all on Kennedy - that's not speculation, we now know it for a fact.

Strangely having done so many books that deal with the context of many of the programs and individuals related to the assassination, it becomes difficult to me too -- sometimes I know I'm being redundant for readers of the other works and at the same time I know I'm not saying enough for those who have not read them. The only recourse I've found is to use a relatively immense number of end notes and to put a lot of copy into some of them that is relevant but diverts from the text in certain places. If you do get SWHT be sue to get the 2010 version which really has the damage control/cover up analysis in it, much of it based on work of the ARRB which had not been available at the time of the earlier edition. Also I need to say there was a whole lot going on around Lee Oswald from Japan on that has to do with various elements of the intelligence community and that includes ONI, CIA (in several sections including later its domestic operations division) and the FBI. And absolutely all of those groups actively covered up knowledge and operational use of Oswald, but I would say always in line with his own personality and agendas and in many instances without his personal knowledge (the best dangle is always an unknowing dangle, not under any sort of positive control but simply "nudged"). I'm aware of a broad Oswald story, its just not the one I've chosen to immerse myself in or write about. As far as the Bush angle goes, first off their are documents showing contact with the CIA but contact in what I would call the "corporate model", in other words very low key but high level meetings along the lines of the CIA gaining to his oil business as a cover, including properties and and assets on Caribbean islands - for use in deniable operations. Of course he like any other patriotic American would agree - in return there were other meetings where he gets provided with introductions and business leads, commercial intelligence that rewards his patriotism, basically quid pro quo. I've seen the documents, David might put his hands on them now but they are years in the past for me. What I can say is that we have documents that detail the full logistics of the Bay of Pigs including the acquisition of all the ships involved and I have written about that at length....in yet another book, In Denial, which is a broad story of deniable action but what I do feel is the most current and in depth study of the Cuba Project and both Eisenhower and JFK's role in it all the way up to the Bay of Pigs. And no, the boats didn't come from Bush nor were they named by him. They came from a Cuban shipping magnate and they and their rather unwilling crews were sequestered and taken over by the CIA and then sent off to war....in what was one of the fundamental errors that doomed the landings.