Larry Hancock

Matt, strictly in terms of how this relates to Tipping Point, in particular segment 5, my view would be that the film was a matter of record even in Dallas, before it got to Hawkeye, before NPIC, and certainly in the form of the storyboards that were used in the initial briefing. It had even been purchased by LIFE. Many people including the media were aware of it. Making it vanish would have fanned speculation about conspiracy and coverup. The only choice was that of obfuscation, restricting access to it, controlling the elements of it that did get into print in the public media, writing about it so as to fit the lone nut scenario (the article which talks about the president turning to face the TSBD when he was shot, pure nonsense showing how far matters could be stretched). All stupid stuff, just barely good enough to make the official story stick - but that is true for a great many areas including the autopsy. And all of it explaining why so many people at various levels were had good reason to be skeptical of the lone nut story - which literally had to be forced into the public record. And to that extent it was all in opposition to the plot and conspiracy I sketch out, not in support of it.

Chris, as a history buff, with a history degree, and as a history writer I've come to feel that "history" ("a study of past events") can be accurate, but that accurate history is not necessarily popular history ("a broad genre of historiography that takes a popular approach, aims at a wide readership, and usually emphasizes narrative, personality and vivid detail over scholarly analysis"). I can recall a historiography professor making that quite clear in discussing source material - warning us about relying too much on news articles, even news of a given period since media news has its factual limitations. If its reporting directly from the scene it may have value, otherwise its likely contaminated by editorial agendas. We were warned that popular histories run the same risks, since they are often written for large circulations and may be constrained by the publishers objective's (these days by politicized school book review committees, look at Texas or Colorado). Academic histories should be superior but reality wades in even then because academic works are often so sterile and cumbersome their circulation becomes limited to academia. Academic publishers hardly ever make a profit and have to be subsidized, popular publishers find a very limited market for works that meet the source and citation standards for academic publication. Having said all that its easy to slam the media, or popular history publishers or even popular history authors (as much as a certain "Killing everybody" figure comes to mind). The other side of the coin are readers who demand personality, intimate details and sensationalism - and who only want the history that fits their own worldview. Plenty of room for blame on both sides.

Having lived though the Camelot era I can say that it does really bring back good memories and its not just naive nostalgia. Even though my family were hard nosed conservatives and opposed many of JFK's actions - including school integration - there was never the sort of personal bitterness we see now. There were comedy albums about the Kennedy's but the social life at the White House, Jackie's personality, JFK's touch football games, they were all viewed as very real and in a sympathetic light by most people. While we often focus on the hate found in certain circles, the national tone was quite different. While we tend to dwell on people who demonize the New Frontier, or the Space Race or the Test Ban treaty, the general sense of new beginnings was quite real - I can even recall being fired up about JFK's health programs and the call for walks and exercise.

Well just to make myself as clear as possible...what I was attempting to say is that my experience with public viewings of the film leads me to believe that the general public often responds to the film with the impression that the president has been shot from the front...for people unfamiliar with the film that produces a real emotional impact and opens many of them up to a frontal shot and brings the official story into question. I simply maintain that if the film, along with many of the other early public remarks out of Dallas including Oswald being driven away in a station wagon and witnesses seeing smoke and apparent shooting from the fence-line, had been widely seen by the public it would have made life much more difficult for the lone nut story. I can say from personal experience that the shooting of Oswald by Ruby raised considerable doubt in the public mind about the lone nut line that was emerging that weekend. The film would have given further push to public skepticism. I did not maintain the film as we see it now proved multiple shooters; I will say that we may well not see now (due to likely frame removal or manipulation among other things) precisely what McMahon observed and mentioned...which in reality was simply something that impressed him that there were multiple shooters. Given that there were two sets of story boards made, and that the first was supposed to be destroyed and produced panic when it was found not to have been, certainly something about the presentation as supported in the first set raised a real problem for the official lone nut story line. I thought I was clear that I was open to frame removal, frame manipulation and even to the possibility to tampering to the image of the wound in the rear of the head. It is sort of surprising to me that we cannot even agree that the Z film, even as we see it now, raises doubt (and would have raised even more then in combination with information out of Dallas) in many peoples minds about a single lone nut shooter firing only from the rear.

The hearings and reports following the Cuba Project and the Bay of Pigs concluded exactly the same thing....only took about four years to totally forget that. Its not a lesson most administrations what to hear; the really only want to hear the story lines they use to get elected. Which of course is extremely dangerous....

I would agree Allen, I know it still has a major impact when shown in history classes and other public venues. It makes the murder real even when it was decades ago and people of all ages react to it.

I'm stretching my memory on Peter's work but I had thought his concept was more a "poison pill" type thing where the conspiracy used insider information and planted leads to point to the Soviet/Cubans - anticipating that the intel agencies would move to protect their associations with Oswald and at the same time the WH would move to avoid a confrontation with the Soviets. I recall that being based on revelations about Mexico City and more details on Johnson's directives to Warren and what was being learned about the options Johnson tried to push before he fell back to the Warren Commission. I'm not sure any of the first or second generation scenarios went that route, generally speaking they were more fragmented with different types of sponsors and less detail. Certainly many of them presented Oswald as the classic patsy in a "cover" sense, used to blame the crime on - more of the classic criminal type conspiracy involving mobsters or even LBJ. But else will likely recall something I've forgotten in regard to that question.

On the Z film question, it all goes back to the nature of the tactical team and the ambush. The people I write about knew JFK had to be killed in Dallas, in the Plaza or elsewhere. While other, earlier plots against him by others involved single shooters or dynamite bombs those were something entirely different and not the well organized effort we see in Dallas. The people behind the Dallas attack were working against a deadline and they planned to be successful one way or the other. Which means multiple shooters and the other things that go along with a well structured infantry style ambush. The attack planning was all about killing JFK, those involved were extremely committed, willing to sacrifice themselves if necessary. This was not the typical movie type contract killing with the mysterious professional shooter relying on some poor patsy to take the fall while he ends up by a pool in a foreign with drinks and women. Which is my way of saying the tactical team's effort went into a maximum type "kill zone" effort without any thought or concern over how many shots were fired how quickly. It was up to the other people to frame Oswald and point the attack towards Castro. Their job was an ambush. I doubt any of them worried that witnesses would report shots from multiple directions and shooters at multiple points - we know that happened and it was a pain to cover up and obfuscate. So was the film showing smoke at the fence-line (and yes it was there, obvious from the overpass with the sunlight directly on it and reflecting, much less so from up Elm street with the sunlight passing through it). There were even early "artifacts" such as my friend Connie interviewing a Parkland Doctor who clearly described a shot into the front of the head, or the TV interview with a finger pointing to the same frontal entry or the DPD officer talking about someone picking Oswald up in a car. You can argue each of those as you choose but they all things that presented public perception problems for a lone nut shooting from the rear and led to concerns that the Dallas Police should just shut up. None of that required the Z film. If Zapruder had left his camera at home we would still have numerous witnesses to multiple shooters and other suspicious people which would suggest conspiracy - and even without Zapruder there are films that suggest that, one shows someone running behind the fence line (the Paschell film I think, might be mistaken on that name but the movement is obvious in the film) and others including what was likely someone in a TSBD window. Not trying to show an attitude but personally I think we have often been tempted to make it all more mysterious by adding things to mix when it was really rather simple....a team of people were successful in an ambush of the president, another team botched whatever expanded frame of Oswald was planned, likely because of Oswald himself and evidence of conspiracy was clear to anyone who wanted to see it. Due to the potential consequences of a conspiracy (either foreign as immediately suspected or domestic as further indications suggested) all the indications of a conspiracy had to be avoided, obfuscated or suppressed. Not the first time, not the last...national security trumps reality...

First to respond to Ron: Its impossible to know what the "people above" the tactical team had as their primary motive but we have a pretty good feel that from Harvey up through the CIA it was felt that JFK posed a national security risk in regard to countering the global communist threat because he was a) too willing to prefer what they considered as naive solutions i.e. neutralism and detente and b) he had brought far too much civilian and multi-agency involvement into cold warfare and that was undermining all their efforts. The further up the chain attitudes probably focused on a) while down at JMWAVE b) had them literally frothing at the mouth and even in memos. Given the guys Wheaton heard talking it could have been either but certainly would have involved b) Yes, false credentials were shown in the area of the fence and of course false credentials reflect good solid planning for the support team, especially those doing overwatch and shielding. It appears that he built the device but it was not needed, probably it was a backup. Building it did not actually make him part of the tactical team so he likely deployed for overwatch...or simply as a spectator, wanting to see JFK killed. Also, if Hargarves was used to build an IED, it suggests the tactical team was indeed small and largely left to its own resources, a standard example of the type of deniable operation these folks were trained to carry out and competent to bring off.

It does look like I need to be more specific in separating the two issues - film and movements vs. film and rear hole. So let's try this: To some extent I think the micro analyses of the body movements over the decades (of which there are several, not surprisingly countering each other) leads away from the reality of the first 48 hours and the and the emergence of a decision to suppress investigation and evidence of conspiracy. The majority of people viewing the Z film for the first time (not only myself but I've seen dozens if not hundreds do so) immediately and intuitively react as if there is obviously a shot from the front - that also became apparent once the film began to be widely shown on television. Perhaps someone has done a statistical perception study - but certainly that is my subjective impression. We also have the personal commentary from an individual at NPIC who first saw the film run; as an experienced marksman he immediately perceived multiple shooters and shots coming in from multiple directions. Personally I believe that is an explanation for holding the film from any general viewing as well as the frame sequencing "error" in the LIFE publication - rightly or wrongly the film had to be presented in a fashion to suppress doubt and totally point towards a rear shooter in the TSBD. I would also argue that first impressions of JFK's body movements (even if they were technically consistent with only shots from the rear - something we can never know for sure) were a problem, which had to be countered by controlling the images, both with LIFE and even with the second set of official story boards which had to be created at NPIC. Of course film control and frame manipulation (whether removing, shifting, etc) is independent from frame alteration. The question of whether the film showed (or still shows) a rear hole is indeed separate and if I appeared to conflate that this should resolve that. I would maintain that if it did clearly and obviously show a hole in the rear of the head, that plus the intuitive reaction to the body movement, would have made it doubly hard to sell the public on only shots from the rear. To what extent frames may have been altered or removed to obfuscate any size rear hole will be argued forever. As I said, I have seen two people very familiar with the film make an illustrated and convincing argument that a hole can still be perceived in the extant frames...Groden did a fine job on that in the Lancer presentation. But in terms of the conspiracy I explore in Tipping Point, neither film manipulation nor film alteration was anticipated or desirable. That conspiracy made no effort to disguise multiple shooters nor more than three shots. The efforts at Z film control, obfuscation, manipulation etc were part of the response that frustrated that goal, dialing public perception back to a single lone nut. If anything, forcing the attack back to a three shot, six second attack by a single individual was counter to the secondary goal of the plot.

Merry Christmas and a suggestion that we begin celebrating departure of 2020 as early as possible. Cheers everyone!!

Without carrying on much further I just want to be forthright and say that I included the torn bill item because I felt it was interesting, often ignored and had some potential relevance to the AMWORLD trade-craft reference I showed. I don't assert that it is was provable as connected to Oswald, simply that it remains interesting and might reflect an instance of trade-craft related to him if it were capable of being verified. Perhaps someday someone will find something to prove it in and vet it as being related to Oswald...unlikely but always possible. I also agreed as to its problems and stated I would not offer it as a verifiable piece of evidence. I am concerned that such controversies tend to suck the life out of the more important issues...which is why I appended those to my earlier post....

Eddy, my take is that the original look at the Z film gave a very convincing evidence of shots from multiple directions including the front and that the briefing boards which were secretly shown to top leadership including the CIA director supported that view. Honestly most people looking that the Z film now intuitively have that impression. In fact that impression is so great that LIFE even published a nonsensical article talking about JFK turning to look towards the TSBD when he was shot. There was simply no doubt that there had been at least one shot from the front. However that impression had to be minimized in the public coverage and a second set of story boards created to sell the long nut shooter. As to whether certain frames were later altered to conceal the nature of the real hole in the rear of the head, I'm open to that sort of obfuscation but I have also seen two presentations (one by Robert Groden just last month) which illustrate a shadow effect on the head and still show rather obvious evidence of an actual hole. So basically I'm convinced the hole is there, I'm uncertain whether it was actually altered in the film to obscure it or whether by playing with exposures it was minimized when put into print. But to answer your question, my view is that the second set of story boards certainly was crated with frames selected to obscure the fact of multiple shooters - just as the autopsy report was reworked multiple times to obfuscate the same thing. And that was known at the top of NPIC, which explains the strong reaction when it was learned the first set had not been immediately destroyed and was still in deep storage.

As you say, there are a number of items of questionable items of evidence not to mention items with broken or controversial chains of evidence. At this point in time everyone has their favorites and in most cases one each of those has one or more people who offer detailed counter arguments about them. Your post on the wallets is a perfect example of how complex such things get. I'm happy to leave Oswald as "stitched up; ..you've made your point on the dollar bill and I understand it. I did offer citations so readers could follow up on those same challenges. In turn I offered my logic and reasons for including mention of it in the previous post, so I'll leave it at that. What I would also like to do is is elevate the discussion a bit and offer the following points for discussion - I consider them key and perhaps should have been more direct in calling them out as my goals for Tipping Point: a) Identify a series of credible sources that are vetted and consistent sources with information about the conspiracy, b) identify a very specific motive behind the attack in Dallas as well as the group of individuals who shared that motive. c) identify the source of the Dallas plot within the CIA, d) identify a critical time frame for the attack, and d) delineate the two tracks in the Dallas conspiracy - the primary track of aborting the secret talks which were about to begin with the Castro regime and the secondary track of associating the attack with Castro and/or his supporters.

About the best you could say is that it would be the right general direction, but it was noted early on that with a jog on that general direction could also actually taken him to Jack Ruby's apartment. LIFE or POST plotted that out in an article as I recall. His official route is plotted out by having at the Tippett shooting and then ending up at the theater, connecting the streets in between as if he were going there...but of course that assumes the theater was both his original and final destination.

My suspicion is that certain of the individuals involved as accessories, and in what initially appeared to be relatively peripheral roles were given a cover story that a legitimate covert action was in play - a provocation which would justify action against the Castro regime. That would have worked very well with certain individuals such as Jack Ruby. A message from Rosellit that he was working with the CIA on a fake attack on JFK would have been an easy sell. In fact a Gruber or a McWillie could have been brought in as cut outs for communications using the same story. Roselli's credentials from the poison plots cannot be underestimated in making the plan work in Dallas. Certain other individuals inside the chaos of Miami and anti-Castro activities would likely have bought into a highly covert op carried out by rogue CIA officers, designed not to kill JFK but to blow apart his back-channel approach to Castro. That approach would have worked well with at least some of the tactical and support team although obviously the core would have not only to have known but have been eager (and willing to sacrifice themselves - something I went over in a recent blog post on "risks"). Beyond that I doubt a provocation cover would have been necessary, Ruby could have brought individuals in for minor roles (plant something in the TSBD, leave a door open, keep people from behind the fence) based on having a bit of dirt on them, offering girls, money etc. No need to get complex. He could always use the simple cover that he was friends with some folks that wanted to do something to protest or embarrass JFK when he was in Dallas. So yes, I think there is very good reason for that speculation and it probably works best with individuals such as Ruby that appear to show an extreme change in behavior once they hear of the actual attack and JFK's death, either immediately or over the next few months. Certainly that includes Lee Oswald. It would be an interesting study and probably a lot more insightful than just listing mysterious deaths.

Three comments, so I'll try to take them in sequence so as not to lose anyone or myself: Ron, I certainly think the chronology is compelling and I intend it to be the starting point for a deeper dive into the to operational tracks - the tactical attack and the Oswald track. I also think the micro analysis of Ruby's changes in behavior (which is presented in more detail in SWHT) demonstrates that Ruby received an order which reinforced his shock and made it clear that he was an accessory to the President's murder and that both the and his family were at risk if Oswald went to trial or worse yet started to talk too much. The call to Gruber shows every sign of desperation - Gruber himself was never really investigated from a criminal standpoint. He was merely questioned, pretty gently if you read the transcript. Steve, certainly I think that Oswald's residence was known, certainly to the FBI subversive desk (likely Heitman) given that I think he was under some level of observation in Dallas. Whether they backtracked him from contacts at the Harlandale House or other observations is a good question. As to the name issue, as we have discussed that remains an open mystery to me - what does seem very clear, as you posted, is that Oswald was aware the his residence was known and suspected that either law enforcement or the others that he had been in contact with would show up looking for him, quickly. Greg: Certainly I'm aware of all the controversy and online back and forth over the dollar bill. I had read all the point/counterpoint and Rex challenged me on it as well (wearing his editors hat). If Tipping Point was intended to go into a Court room or a legal case I would have left it out. However I think it illustrated a number of loose ends that remain mysterious - primarily related to potential items of evidence that got lost or misplaced inside DPD (or the FBI) when the word came down make things simple and literally to "lose" things that might raise questions. I give other examples in the work, arguably this is one of the more questionable. But its also quite mysterious (much like the reference to the Chief knowing all about Martino, the note which appears on the HSCA interview document). It is also of particular interest since it would be a sign of "tradecraft" and indeed matches a similar practice we can document in use by the AMWORLD people - people I offer as persons of interest in regard to Oswald and the attack. That made it relevant enough to the story for me to at least mention it, but as you note I did give citations and cautions and everyone is free to toss it. Basically its in because I think it should be at least considered, and because if it were taken from Oswald it would be highly suggestive. Plus...I'm known to be pretty conservative for a conspiracy person but every once in a while I do need to channel by wild, speculative side.

Maybe its just us Ron but I don't think so....on the other hand I learned to keyboard on a manual typewriter (60 WPM) so maybe my fingers just disdain the smaller keys...

Thank you Sir, I will share that with Rex asap. I envy people who can type on a phone at all, I have enough of a problem with a full sized keyboard....even a laptop keyboard gets to me if I shift position, have to reset myself and lock my hands into position on the keys.

On the first point, my best guess is that the part of the conspiracy plan that was to link in Oswald with Castro and Cuba began to fall apart when Oswald himself realized he had been manipulated...that may have been when he walked away from the TSBD or equally likely when he heard the talk on the bus that JFK had actually been shot...it certainly had gone off the rails when he heard about more in the Taxi and was asked to be dropped off away from his apartment house. Martino said the second part of the plot collapsed at the point where the officer was shot and Oswald was taken into custody. Whatever was planned to glue together the Castro link didn't happen, if any professional pieces had been created they didn't get introduced and the connection was not what it needed to be to immediately stampede public opinion that weekend. In fact only one newspaper carried a headline associating Oswald with Castro. What pieces were left were not enough sell the Castro story and if you look closely the Castro linkage offered to the public was little different than what had existed after his New Orleans visibility. The other pieces that come into play in the next few days were very hit and miss, with no solid foundation and easily dismissed (DRE tried, Martino tried, but nobody could provide witnesses, photographs, or even name credible sources or Cuban double agents)....so either there was a good professional plan to frame him with Cuban influence and it failed, or what was prepared was relatively weak in the first place. The final tipping point was when the first set of story boards were shown, when it was clear there were multiple shooters and when it was obvious that other parties unknown had been associating with Oswald. That last thing you want during a national security crisis is a mystery like that - that can have terrible consequences. I'd peg the next key point occurring by Sunday morning when a directive was issued to ensure this was a "lone nut" action. Which is what the FBI was told to write on Sunday afternoon, with minimal evidence and not a lot of enthusiasm. As to the Secret Service, I would say there were two major shadows over them - one obvious one being that their were a lot of agents behaving unprofessionally, and they had been for some time. That was really not unknown at the time, clearly a number of them did not respect JFK (Vince spells that out) and were not giving it their all...and even Clint Hill who did admire the first family went out clubbing with the guys in Fort Worth. The other shadow is that JFK was known to be at risk and for reasons I don't claim to know for sure, reactions to the known threat were minimal. They knew about the Bircher rifle teams but instituted no new protocols for sniper attack. They knew about the dynamite bomb in Florida and instituted no now protocols in regard to motorcades or events. They stayed with the same sort of practices that they had used for years - including older drivers with no special defensive driving training such a Greer. For that matter the Dallas trip was the first advance Lawson had ever led and his preparation was pretty much on the job. Could there have been something suspicious in that lack of response, possibly. Could it have been inertia and just lack of initiative, also possibly. What I can offer is my assessment that any experienced infantry assault team would have had a very good chance of making the attack work, simply knowing the route, having done some basic research looking at photos of earlier motorcades, and having the type of local intelligence access I described in Segment 5. What extra precautions had been taken related to close in attacks, especially with a focus on the Trade Mart. Literally noting special had been done to increase security practices for the motorcade (or actually any of the motorcades of that fall) That despite of the fact that most recently, in Tampa, kids threw candy into the limo and the agents realized that could easily have been a bomb...but no changes were made even after that).

Thanks Anthony, if you can recall which section the misspelling is in it would help us locate and change it -its amazing how much editing we have already done as compared to something that goes through the purely commercial press, but we still have more to do. We will be making a number of spelling and related corrections as we move it from the WEB version to the Word version needed to publish. As to your question, at the moment the priority for a small group of us who continue to wrestle with this scenario is trying to drive even further down in the operational level and map how command and control would work for a two track effort in Dallas. Clearly it worked better on one track than the others since one failed. Resolving that failure and this might be one path towards an answer to your question. In the interim I will spend some time on that question and offer some thoughts on my blog. My initial observation - based on a number of NSC and JCS study papers of the period - is that the primary war the Chiefs wanted to fight was with China, and they wanted to use nukes to destroy its industrial/scientific base before it got atomic weapons. That was the same position taken against Russia at the end of WWII because the JCS studies demonstrated that there was no winning a nuclear conflict if the adversary hit first. LeMay had not wanted to use SAC or nukes in the Korean War, he wanted to save that weapon for the total elimination of the Soviets and any nuclear threat from them. And both Korea and later Vietnam would prove that even destruction of the industrial base of a front line Communist adversary would not mean absolute victory as long as China and Russia were able to backstop them. The question you posed deserves an extended analysis and essay but the answer may well be "nobody", The people who wanted the U.S. to fight a war were the Cuban expatriates (and some of them still thought they could do it on their own if the U.S. didn't keep obstructing them). Later in life Martino made some very limited remarks to family members to the effect that some of those involved in Dallas ultimately came to feel that they had simply been used, that promises of "big things" had been given to them simply to get them to act. Given how often CIA surrogates were used in that fashion over the decades, I certainly could see that having happened with at least some of the individuals involved. For others simple revenge and eliminating JFK and the Castro outreach may well have been more than enough.

The fifth and final segment of Tipping Point is now available on the Mary Ferrell Foundation. https://www.maryferrell.org/pages/Tipping_Point_Part5.html This final segment focuses on the conspiracy in terms of its activities in Dallas, both on November 22, 1963 and during the weeks preceding the attack. It addresses the types of assets which were called into play and deployed in Dallas to support both the attack on President Kennedy, and the linkage of that attack to Cuba and Fidel Castro. Previous segments have developed the point that there the President was increasingly at risk during 1963. Active threats were known, both from the radical right (John Birch/NSRP rifle teams), and from radical Cuban exiles; those threats were reported to and communicated within the Secret Service. We now know that by October some of those threats were being taken seriously, but to date none of them show the range of assets, the level of local support activity, or the degree of planning which occurred in Dallas. How and why that level of support was uniquely available in Dallas emerges from the context laid out in the preceding segments, specifically in the connections between Jack Ruby, Cuban affairs, and certain members of the Havana and Las Vegas casino “crowd”. Segment 5 illustrates the danger of revealing the conspiracy which would have been inherent in a full exposure and coordinated investigation of Ruby’s history. It also demonstrates the extent to which a key portion of the plan for Dallas imploded with the capture of Lee Oswald, bringing Ruby into a totally new role. Beyond the uniqueness of Dallas (both in terms of Lee Oswald and Jack Ruby) this segment also explores the tools and tactics of the assassination which reveal clear signs of what was a paramilitary attack employing standard infantry tactics and practices and carried out by well trained and experienced participants. Deconstructing the attack also reveals that it was in no way designed to conceal a conspiracy. If anything it was carried out so as to reveal a multiple shooters and a level of tactical organization which would be expected from a coordinated team – not to cover itself by placing the blame on a single “lone nut”. The segment concludes with an examination of key elements in the chaos which followed the failure of the second element of the conspiracy (the framing of Lee Oswald as a Castro regime tool). That examination includes the follow up efforts of both those inside the conspiracy, and the senior officials in Washington D.C. who determined that national security demanded that a conspiracy neither be investigated nor exposed.

The fifth and final segment of Tipping Point is now available on the Mary Ferrell Foundation. https://www.maryferrell.org/pages/Tipping_Point_Part5.html This final segment focuses on the conspiracy in terms of its activities in Dallas, both on November 22, 1963 and during the weeks preceding the attack. It addresses the types of assets which were called into play and deployed in Dallas to support both the attack on President Kennedy, and the linkage of that attack to Cuba and Fidel Castro. Previous segments have developed the point that there the President was increasingly at risk during 1963. Active threats were known, both from the radical right (John Birch/NSRP rifle teams), and from radical Cuban exiles; those threats were reported to and communicated within the Secret Service. We now know that by October some of those threats were being taken seriously, but to date none of them show the range of assets, the level of local support activity, or the degree of planning which occurred in Dallas. How and why that level of support was uniquely available in Dallas emerges from the context laid out in the preceding segments, specifically in the connections between Jack Ruby, Cuban affairs, and certain members of the Havana and Las Vegas casino “crowd”. Segment 5 illustrates the danger of revealing the conspiracy which would have been inherent in a full exposure and coordinated investigation of Ruby’s history. It also demonstrates the extent to which a key portion of the plan for Dallas imploded with the capture of Lee Oswald, bringing Ruby into a totally new role. Beyond the uniqueness of Dallas (both in terms of Lee Oswald and Jack Ruby) this segment also explores the tools and tactics of the assassination which reveal clear signs of what was a paramilitary attack employing standard infantry tactics and practices and carried out by well trained and experienced participants. Deconstructing the attack also reveals that it was in no way designed to conceal a conspiracy. If anything it was carried out so as to reveal a multiple shooters and a level of tactical organization which would be expected from a coordinated team – not to cover itself by placing the blame on a single “lone nut”. The segment concludes with an examination of key elements in the chaos which followed the failure of the second element of the conspiracy (the framing of Lee Oswald as a Castro regime tool). That examination includes the follow up efforts of both those inside the conspiracy, and the senior officials in Washington D.C. who determined that national security demanded that a conspiracy neither be investigated nor exposed.

Ron, perhaps the most specific way I could put it would be that Kent and Joannides were both working on a variety of activities, which included activities with DRE as well as a number of other projects which involved various assets at JMWAVE. Those activities all occurred under SAS control and ranged from propaganda to political action to counter intelligence against the Cubans at a number of points - ranging from the UN in New York, in New Orleans and down to Mexico City. Phillips was assigned to SAS in late summer and took up new projects while remaining in Mexico City and wearing two hats, local CI and SAS activities. JMWAVE provided a broad range of support for SAS, including propaganda, counter intelligence work, use of its Cuban Intel group and the AMOTS (under Sforza), maritime operations, etc. Which is why you find these people interacting at so many levels and on so many projects - and crossing paths with Morales as Chief of Operations. Just as one example you find Sforza, Morales and Phillips all associated with a SAS political action operation to bring Castro's sister out of Cuba and use her for propaganda purposes. David and Bill have opened up new doors into many of these activities, Jeff Morley others - including the one which relates to DRE and SAS, Kent and Joannidies. That's the one that seems to make the CIA most nervous even now decades later, and the one that would most likely point directly towards Miami's knowledge of Lee Oswald.