Larry Hancock

Thanks Matt, that's great to hear!  Let me try a brief point by point on your questions.

1.  Basically the relationship between the CIA and DRE was bipolar - in terms of propaganda SAS thought they were doing good work and had the best "reach" of any exile group; in therms of intelligence collections they also still had the best links on island inside Cuba. From that perspective they were valuable.  On the other hand, their military wing had become increasingly frustrated, bitter and openly dismissive (if not outright hostile) towards the Agency and the administration. Its military people had been negative towards CIA operations ever since the failures to supply and support its on island groups even before the Bay of Pigs.  That disconnect simply got increasingly worse after the missile crisis and with the new administration crackdown on missions. That's when its military leaders like Blanco, Salvat and Carlos Hernandez really began to go off to pursue their own missions. At the same time WAVE continued to straddle the fence, even using some of those same individuals on missions in 1963.  Given its track record, the level of hubris at Miami Station was pretty amazing.

2. Martino said that he was a courier, and I suspect that meant primarily to folks operating in Dallas - we know Vidal was there during that period, so was Salvat.  My guess would be that his contact with Ruby would have been nothing more than carrying some coded message that would set up contact with other people - Martino had been part of the Havana scene and was identifiable, but it would have been more like a message just to contact someone else to kick start the process of bringing in Ruby.  Martino would not have been the main contact with him after that point.

3. Yes, Helms response to Howard is available in a couple of places, in the form of memos he wrote.  I should have footnoted that, I would start looking at the great articles on the outreach in at the National Security Archives, they have an extensive sections with documents on the back-channel approach. Its in more than one place but this would be a start:  https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/cuba/2018-04-20/cuba-us-intimate-diplomacy

4. A political visit to Texas had been under discussion since spring, actual planning would have had to begin at the end of summer but I don't think the actual city by city event schedule was available even at the time of the Sept announcement of the "Texas trip"

5. My sense of things is that alternative patsies may have been discussed at times as options were being tossed around but that once it was clear that Oswald would end up in Dallas (ie. with a new baby having arrived) at the time of the President's appearance there, then  Oswald was it for the conspiracy.  Oswald's Cuban/Castro image had been so well established with the media in New Orleans that was an "in your face" link while other mysterious Cuban agents would have been a much harder story to sell.  The content on Oswald was already available, for that matter he was already being used in propaganda. 

There was gated access to the paid parking lot to the west of the TSBD on the Elm Street extension. There was also an actual gatekeeper to open the gate in the morning and evenings, I've seen pictures of the swing type gate.  Given that it was normally closed off during the day, Bowers was surprised to see a car driving in the lot at lunchtime.  

It would have been possible to drive across the construction area to the north of the building where there was no street or paved road but you would have been going across dirt by the railroad track once you got beyond the rear, loading dock entrance of the TSBD.   I don't know that it was actually fenced off from the paid parking area, have never seen that discussed that I recall.

Also noteworthy is that there was a special, partially covered area on the west directly adjacent to the building.  Interestingly I've never seen a DPD report saying that are was searched....or that the locked rail car offices on the track across the train yard were actually opened and searched.  You see an officer on top of one of the cars looking across the yard but I've always wondered if the cars were actually searched.

Thanks David,  Doug has talked about scheduling David Boylan and I on in September to discuss our new work on the Red Bird leads....that should be pretty lively....

I've run into instances where Chrome has been recommended for a site but I opened Doug's with Firefox with no problem....got me on that one.

I've had several people tell me they enjoyed the recent dialog with Doug Campbell on Tipping Point.  Doug took things in some different directions that had not really been part of the previous dialog on the book and I had a good time in our conversations...which extended over two hours.  If you are interested you can find the show archived here:

https://www.spreaker.com/user/7338953/185-july-22-2021-logic-clear-reasoning-z

Beyond that, for those who have the book and who decide they really want to dig into some focused research around the figures in it,  I can say that thanks to a lot of volunteer work and considerable eye strain, we hope to have a much expanded index available by the end of summer.  If anyone things that is a simple thing I can assure you its not;  I realize not that many people will use it but the whole goal is to further research so if only a few people find it helpful, so bit it.

Stu and I have covered this a number of times including in our book The Awful Grace of God.  First, the reason Milteer's associate was being taped at all is that there was active "sting" in progress targeting individuals suspected of obtaining a rifle for an attack on MLK; if the sting had worked that effort would have led to charges against a number of individuals - so there was law enforcement concern about immediately compromising the sting.

However the  tip was provided to both the FBI and the Secret Service.  Because a reference had been made to Washington DC  in regards to the attack, that is where the report went - since Secret Service PRS filed standing threats strictly by location.  As to Milteer, the FBI put him under surveillance and did visit some of the individuals who he had named as being likely to kill JFK.  That produced nothing but denials, however doing that much ultimately the leaks did compromise the informant who had been working with both Miami PD and the FBI.   Long story, details in the book but the incident was certainly not ignored - just handled in standard practice by both agencies,  reflecting how poorly the Secret Service was handling threats to the President and how often FBI follow up burned informants and did no real good.

Its also worth pointing out that at the same time the FBI was monitoring very active threats from ultra right wing groups to organize rifle attack teams and go after a variety of targets, not just JFK but Supreme Court justices and in particular a list of very wealthy Jews. And in Texas, a specific threat against JFK was reported out of one of those ultra right groups (the NSRP) was given to the Secret Service in advance - out of San Antonio.

In prehistoric times we used a term that still seems appropriate - it was simply the "establishment", regardless of who was in power at a given time.  Still seems pretty accurate to me since it implies a primary motive of status quo.

As to Matt's second point - absolutely!

Matt and Ron, I did try replying to your posts for several days but for some reason the messages would not register nor could I message either of you direct.  I'll be looking forward to your comments during and after reading Matt and Ron, yes I see the events in New Orleans as being key to bringing Oswald into a position where his image could be used in a number of SAS and DRE activities - activities which would have been standard practice and sanctioned.

But that made him an obvious candidate for a frame when the Dallas action jelled in October and beyond that allowed some of the same folks who had been using him in sanctioned activities to piggyback him into the conspiracy.  Hopefully I spell that out well enough to follow in the book. 

Which as it turns out is not exactly the end of the research for me that I thought it was (books yes, research no)...turns out there are a couple of leads back from Dallas to Miami that still have some interesting potential. 

I'd meditate and center myself but I'm not sure where that would be now..?

Ron, I had a hard disc crash and had to move to a new computer, just now coming back online after two weeks.

Actually it was not just Joannidies, there were other DRE case officers over time and Morales himself had been a DRE military case officer.  Tipping Point starts with Jeff's great work and expands the focus to other CIA officers including Emilio Rodriquez and even DCS Moore at JMWAVE.  Actually expanding that particular contact into Emilo's counter intelligence and CIA's project targeting Lechuga and Sylvia Duran - which involved Emilio with both the UN in NYC and Mexico City - is one of the major new elements in Tipping Point and really helps give a much fuller picture of what SAS / WAVE was doing in and around Oswald.  Not to mention what the DRE itself was doing - which is a real revelation.  

It all begins to show how visible Oswald was in Miami and how easy it was to piggyback a frame onto sanctioned CIA propaganda and counter intelligence projects going on as of October and November. 

Well there is certainly a lot in that post to reply to...grin.   Let's try to break it down:

1. Ruby did have foreknowledge that something was to happen during the motorcade but certainly not something as sensational and dangerous as the murder of the President...and something that could put him at risk. His role up to the point of Oswald's unplanned capture was relatively minor and very much routine for him, including identification of dirty cops for minor roles.  I make the case for that in both SWHT 2010 and Tipping Point.

2. My take is that the recording equipment goes back to 1959 when Ruby was in play as an FBI source - most likely in regard to Cuban gun running.  The FBI was most definitely running a sting against gun runners,  evidence of that is in the arrest of Robert McKewon and his associates.  Whether Ruby contributed anything to that is unknown but his use by the FBI stopped once McKewon's ring was busted.

3. I really don't give any credit to the Jarnigan story, for many reasons including having the conversation in Ruby's club.  Ruby was far too cunning to have that sort of conversation in his club (its as stupid as the Oswald/Cuban Embassy conversation story about Oswald taking money to kill JFK).  My take is that Jarnigan inserted the Connally aspect into the dialog after the fact simply to a) give some credence to his story and b) to avoid questions about why he would not have reported and obvious threat to the President before hand....as a member of the bar that would have been a given.

4. On the other hand the Luce call is something entirely different and part of some deep follow-on research to Tipping Point that David and I are doing.  If it jells it could be very significant but as present is very much a work in progress - and has nothing to do with Ruby.

Its noteworthy that all the sources on Ruby in Vegas were quite positive,  and that this was all reported and investigated ....but like much else in regard to Ruby they worked very hard at avoiding it.

On a side note and something not brought back up in regard to Ruby in Tipping Point, there is good circumstantial evidence that it was Roselli who made the call to bring in a high powered attorney for Ruby and to cover it up by attributing that (and the funding for the lawyer) to Ruby's brother.  That is in SWHT.

I think anything in his his personality file would be interesting, especially if it related to the proposed Phillips CIA TV series.

But the most interesting material would be in any operational files involving him as a source or his business operations as covers, especially for broadcasting.  That's why  I mentioned the Tejuana, which was the first large craft obtained by the CIA for maritime operations in the first Cuba project.  It was financed by Phillips contacts in Texas and elsewhere,  reworked and armed by the CIA and crewed by individuals that show up around the JFK story, like Bayo.  It also transported Felix Rodriquez into Cuba for an abortive rifle attack on Castro.

We learned a huge amount about Phillips contacts and activities as well as early anti-Castro activities from the ships operational files...for reference that is in SWHT including an appendix on its owner and in the more recent In Denial. 

Actually it depends on what types of files from what agency. 

The CIA would have a personality file on him and would be larger or smaller according to how much he volunteered any intelligence to them as a corporate source.  It he was actively serving as a source it would look like any of the corporate source files we have seen ranging from Trade Mart including Clay Shaw.

However there might be a lot more if he and Phillips actually did take their proposal for a TV series on the CIA to the Agency; the CIA is always keep explore that sort of thing and if either man made an approach you can bet it would be documented and evaluated.

On the other hand, if McClendon did contribute assets or allow any of this facilities to be used for either covert communications or propaganda broadcasts that might more likely show up in project reports rather than his personality file. As an example we know all about the financial sponsors for the Tejuana (orchestrated by Phillips) but from project and  operational files, not personality files.

As to the FBI,  Hoover was also keen on major media outlets so there actually might have been an FBI security file on McClendon and his operations.

There has been some interest in preparing a more in depth and expanded index for the print version of Tipping Point and one volunteer is already at work on that - but needs help, especially from folks who may already be preparing their own focused lists of persons or places of interest.  We would be able to post the expanded index on the MFF site - but of course it would only relate to the book not the serialization. 

If anyone is interested and would like to volunteer for some work on it just drop me a note at larryjoe@westok.net

Paul, I assume  you were responding to Benjamin rather than myself but if it was me I would note that at this point Veciana is not relevant to the conspiracy I detail in Tipping Point and you will not find any mention of him there. 

Veciana's final and sensational expansion of his CIA role inside Cuba, as deconstructed by John, certainly undermined Vecians's overall credibility.   I certainly am rested in how John deals with him in the period following 1960, including Veciana's purported work for USAID and I was hoping he was working on that, not sure about that now from what I've read about John's current directions.

Rex is working on a Kindle version of Tipping Point but Amazon has moved to a new EBook platform and it has been a real challenge for him, he started with an earlier version of their publishing program for EBooks and it turns out they no longer really support it - the Kindle version has been ready for weeks but actually getting it publishing on Amazon has been more than challenging so its hard to estimate the timing at present.  I'll try to get an update.

As to a guess at the girl (and her brother), yes I could make a guess and both a name and a photo a long time researcher floated several years ago.  But I've found no way to truly connect her to Dallas or our key persons of interest. The two would however point back to Miami connections rather than Dallas.  At this point the Cuban talking to January is a much more solid prospect for connecting Red Bird to them.

For reference, Wayne January's experiences (based on Matthew's original work with January and my follow on research on the aircraft once we had the tail number) is discussed in more detail in SWHT 2010 if you have that.  David Boyan and I also revisited it at length in the Wheaton leads paper, giving a likely identification of the American officer at the airport with the Cuban to pick up the aircraft the week of JFK's visit.  In that paper we proposed and examined several possible Cuban pilots as possibilities for the individual who made the remarks to January since that is a key lead.

That lead is revisited in Tipping Point and at the moment David and I are working on what may be the final and most likely identification of the Cuban pilot - which if correct will go further to independently lead us directly to the set of individuals involved in the Dallas conspiracy.

In all of this its important to recall that January himself approached the FBI,  but when interviewed he began with the information about the visit of suspicious people wanting to charter an aircraft, found the FBI only wanted to talk about January's own possible connection to Jack Ruby and like others (Bowers included) shut up when he saw the FBI had its own agenda.

It was Matthew Smith's original work with January which gave us the Cuban lead from Red Bird, and when he shared the aircraft tail number with me (made available to him only after January's death by his widow)  help from Alan Kent and an FAA employee who asked to remain anonymous that allowed us to trace the aircraft to Houston Air Center and to its final sale to a Mexican airline two years later.

Hopefully David and I may be able to close the circle, identify both the American officer and the Cuban pilot to a great deal of certainty and fully develop the lead from January - after something like 30 years of working on it.

Thanks Chuck, actually that is one of the sources I cite in Tipping Point and I think its very revealing in regard to Oswald's actual understanding of what was going on around him and the lack of his knowledge of the forces in play around him.  And its important to remember that he was a) not at all stupid and b) very much aware that he would end up on trial.

Beyond that, and its just me - I'd trust Lee's remarks over Robert's:

"Yes, they are. . . . Junie needs a new pair of shoes."
      (Robert Oswald told the Warren Commission, "To me his answers were mechanical, and I was not talking to the Lee I knew.")

It does tend to get lost I'm afraid, but the implications of linking detailed knowledge about Oswald to a SAS officer in Miami who was involved with political action and CIA activities targeting Cuban UN personnel in New York as well as Cuban embassy staff in Mexico City seems really significant - especially when Cuban personnel in question at each location were also connected and one of them was Sylvia Duran. 

Jim Olivier also brought the woman attendant who accompanied Fruge when he was transporting Chermie and she confirmed his remarks about her remarks, her language,  and her trauma. 

Whatever had triggered it, there is no doubt that she had heard something that related to JFK being at risk, that gossip might have come in the car on the way back from Florida or it may have come out of the club where she worked in Dallas...the guy she worked for on the drug runs there was confirmed as part of her overall drug transport story.

Its important to appreciate that David's new work is actually twofold.  And it means that we now know of three different paths that would have carried information about Oswald to Miami:

The personal connection between the Rodriquez brothers which would have taken it to a key SAS foreign intelligence office tasked with counter intelligence duties at both the UN and Mexico City.

The DRE group connection which took the same information from New Orleans to its office in Miami and from there too other anti-Castro groups

The DRE group connection in Miami which took information to SAS case officers in Miami

But beyond that David had opened up the door to the circulation of that same information inside the Miami office, the first due to the fact that SAS officers there had their performance reviews done by Wave Deputy Chief of Station Moore and the fact that Tony Sforza's AMOTS supported SAS counter intelligence activities including those carried out in Mexico City.

Over to you David...

While I can't corroborate her remarks about at threat to JFK in Dallas its certainly true there was gossip floating in certain circles about people wanting him dead, that included within criminal circles.  And as noted, Rose had a long time connection to the low levels of those circles along the Gulf Coast.

However aside from that,  the Louisiana Patrol did take her remarks on drug shipments seriously and their inquiry corroborated virtually everything about the drug shipment she described coming into Texas, that is documented and I discuss it in SWHT. The problem there was the stake out was blown and everybody backed away from it as a consequence.

Everyone who has the 2010 version already has that so I'll leave it at that.

Actually he had already started and I'm sort of following along in his wake...grin.  

Also, the DPUK session will be on Zoom.  It will be an overview of Tipping Point along with some expanded remarks about JFK at the Bay of Pigs, revisiting the extent to which false blame for the failure of the effort was embedded with the WAVE station personnel and the Cuban exiles by Bissell following the disaster.

I need to check and make sure what format there is for the session, so much is Zoom these days its become sort of default but now that I think about it I'm not sure - will ask.