Larry Hancock

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.

Great, you are definitely pulling out some of the key points Ron (and yes, these sorts of details are why we decided an actual book that somebody could work with hands on would really be helpful). The bond between Harvey and Angleton is key, indeed a look at some of the final letters between the two before Harvey's death brings out that they were sharing something very special. And explains why Angleton was most likely responsible for the attempts to steal key papers from Harvey's home after his death. Phillips connection to propaganda out of New Orleans is important, both as related to original Cuba project back in 60/61 and in regard to Oswald and both INCA and DRE in 1963. When you get to segment 4 you will find a lot more discussion about not just propaganda but several ways that SAS/JMWAVE were using Oswald and his "image". Some of which explain Phillips stop off in Miami on the way back from D.C. in the fall. You've already got a sense of why the work is titled "Tipping Point" - that develops in segment 4 as well. Looks like you are well on your way.

Boom indeed...grin. Yes Sturgis repeatedly failed to get through Batista security to get supplies to Castro, as did most of the other efforts to supply rebel groups. This comes from the records of the revolutionary groups themselves who became desperate for weapons and supplies - their folks in the U.S. were not being very successful either. Sforza's cover inside Cuba was as a professional gambler so that mandated lots of time in the Casino's, lots of networking with the locals and with the American employees....and of course put him in an excellent position to run a stay behind network of just those sorts of folks as Castro came into power. Its no wonder he ended up running the AMOTS when he came out. Yes, the McWillie / Ruby connection was very deep and long lasting and most likely key to using Ruby in Dallas. And Ruby's first use in regard to Cuba was much earlier, its easy to see why the WC wanted to stay away from the real depth of his connections to Cuba activities....

Hosty had presented at Lancer and Debra had spoken to him prior to that on multiple occasions and he was friendly enough. He said some rather dramatic things in his presentation, which should be on the conference DVD - mostly in regard to his friends on the Bureau in Mexico City telling him they had Oswald under field surveillance there, had photos with him in meetings outside the embassy with Soviet agents. I think Hosty also claimed that actually a Cuban Visa was mailed to Oswald and was recovered - we were very interested in all those things and I spoke to him afterwards and he affirmed them. Now that I think about it he was really continuing to position a Soviet conspiracy with Oswald in his remarks. I passed him a hard copy of the Patterson document while he was at the conference, saying I wanted to talk to him about it. We had at least a couple of telephone calls afterwards but at the time I was trying to get more details and affirmation on the sensational things he had said and while I brought up the document he just shifted to conversation back to what he had been talking about and I never really got him to engage on it. It was not my top priority at the time since the other things were seemingly new information (we had known about Patterson and Revill for ages) and I wasn't pushing him on it. Of course the new things he mentioned never solidified and remain pretty dubious at this point in time. I'm sort of surprised he didn't just take the time to kick back the Patterson remark to Kostikov like he did with the HSCA but he just simply ducked it...and I'm sure I had not seen the HSCA document you posted above or I would have brought that up. Seems like many years ago now....and it was...

Well I had written some of the relevant chronology in SWHT so after a quick scan I find the following: Patterson quotes Hosty as saying Oswald had contacted two "known subversives about two weeks before the assassination". Hosty also remarked to DPD Officer Jack Revill stating that Oswald was a "known Communist" and had been under observation. When chided for not sharing information he reminded Revill that it was FBI policy not to share "information pertaining to espionage". As far as timing goes, Hosty was first informed about Oswald visiting the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City on Oct. 18 (that came from INS, no mention of Kostikov). The FBI Director was informed of an Oswald letter to the Soviet Embassy in New York on November 19....so far I find no indication Hosty was copied on anything about that at that nor earlier, maybe I'm missing it. However both dates would be pretty inconsistent with Hosty's remarks to the HSCA. He pulls appears to pull both incidents together in his remarks to the HSCA but if you look closely he actually seems to be saying he only learned of the New York letter after the assassination. Based on what I see so far Hosty is citing Oswald's visit to the Soviet embassy in Mexico in September, which Hosty learned about on October 8, as an explanation for what Patterson described as Hosty saying that the FBI observing Oswald with "subversives" within the two weeks of November immediately prior to the assassination. Not a good fit....

Well it would be a stretch to call a foreign embassy staffer in Mexico City (or an entire embassy in New York) a "subversive" (pretty sure the Patterson material talks about subversives rather than foreign agents), especially coming from someone who performed counter intelligence activities as Hosty did. So that usage is something to check. Good find Matt, I actually don't recall seeing that before - and certainly Hosty did not give me that answer (or any answer) when I asked him about it directly. But more to the point, my recollection is that Hosty specifically referenced a contact in his remarks which would have occurred a week to two weeks before the assassination. That would not fit this explanation...I also think he said he had been "observed" in contact with the subversives which would raise another issue. It would be interesting to check the timeline and see exactly when Hosty would have received an Oswald file which referred either to the contact in Mexico City (specifically to Kostikov) or the mail intercept. This certainly deserves some further checking, given the destruction of the note to the FBI, the destruction of a page in Oswald's notebook and a substitution, I would tend to think this was more diversion - simply another "misunderstanding". I certainly don't think there was a follow up to share information of any nature with the Secret Service, which Hosty would indicate surely would happen. If the FBI really did feel those two contacts were of real consequence, it should have been a definite national security lead which deserved an investigation of Soviet conspiracy with Oswald.

Thanks Matt, much appreciated...and of course there are many, many scenarios - Jim Marrs did one of the best jobs in highlighting alternative scenarios in Crossfire. There are also individuals of interest that I don't focus on in Tipping Point simply because they were either not directly relevant to the Dallas plot (in my view) or the body of information on them was not the equal of the names I do introduce. What I am doing with some of those people and tangents is blogging on them individually, giving my reasons for not including them, but also as much information as I've found relevant. So Tipping Point is becoming interwoven with those blog posts. I will likely do the same with some of the points brought up here - Eddy made a good one about "risk" and I expect to blog abut that sometime in the next few days. I can do the same with other points brought up here....I'm not sure I can encapsulate "the only plot afoot" point you brought up in the last post in a blog post but I'll probably give that a try. So basically I would encourage anyone reading Tipping Point to either bring up those sorts of thoughts (that occur as you read) here or email or message them to me and I'll respond in one form or the other, possibly with a blog post if that seems feasible.

Matt, I think if you read Tipping Point closely I cover exactly what you posted - yes the hate and the talk did begin after the Bay of Pigs and continue after the missile crisis. The first concrete attempt might well have been at the Orange Bowl ceremony in Miami. Now grand conspiracy folks might want all those to be connected, I don't think so nor do I think Chicago was a sophisticated plot - I've blogged over and over on that and cover it in Tipping Point again but I know I'm not likely to change anyone's minds on that - there are really three different and independent aspects to Chicago and they have to be considered independently to avoid them becoming entangled. On the other had I get very specific about people who had made threats against JFK who going to Chicago and name names and the major group/clique where that was happening. There is no doubt in my mind that they some of them wanted JFK dead and for that matter that some of them were involved in the Dallas plot in one fashion or another. What I've written in Tipping Point is how the very specific plot for Dallas evolved, when, who, and more on how in Segment 5. As to the Dallas attack, there are indications of a couple of back up plans but its all anecdotal. Heck, if we can't be definitive about exactly what happened in the plaza its hard to do much more than speculate. Of course Hargraves did say his bomb just wasn't needed and there were cars parked on the Stemmons access ramp and the off ramp at Parkland...not to mention the stalled pick up on Elm Street (maybe innocent, maybe not, maybe with a bomb in the driver didn't even know about). In any event, I have no intention of trying to force the Dallas plot scenario in Tipping Point on anyone, what you see is what you get; but my choice was to focus on the attack that unfortunately worked rather than go off on tangents (I did enough of that in SWHT).

I really do need to add something else to consider when thinking about "risk". Although its purely speculative, if the tactical team members in the Plaza were the radical Cuban patriots that I characterize in Tipping Point, they had already risked their lives on multiple occasions. If they had been killed in the attack in Dallas, it would have been an acceptable risk. If they had been taken prisoner, they would have had two very effective options. If JFK were dead or insured they would have had the option of claiming to to have been double agents working for Castro. If JFK had escaped, they could have revealed his secret dialog with Castro - which would have caused a Congressional inquiry . That would have blown away the back channel negotiations and blown that apart as well as severely damaging him politically. In any of those contingencies, for a patriot willing to die for the cause, there was really no risk at all in terms of accomplishing their objective. While that thinking is pure speculation it would be perfectly consistent with earlier actions, including the attempt to damage the Kennedy Administration via the TILT mission.

I've tried to avoid discussing Tipping Point here rather than in the book section of the forum but I would agree that the Dallas plot was high risk - although comparable to any major political assassination involving paramilitary action, certainly no more than the attempted attacks on Castro and for that matter other assassinations of major political figures. The people I've called out were mentally prepared for that sort of risk and for penetrating and operation in a far more secure and denied environment. Which brings up the point that there may well have been back up attack plans in Dallas and we only know about the one which actually succeeded. As I said recently in another post, the people who risk such attacks know its all or none, if they succeed the chaos will cover their action from a tactical standpoint. If they fail the world falls on them. Segment 5 will expand on some of the points you mention here Eddy, including the actual nature of the cover up as well as what was supposed to happen but did not when the full plan failed early in the afternoon after the murder of the President. The important point to deal with is that there was never any intention by the plotters that a conspiracy would not be obvious - there was no need to conceal it, just the opposite. The only need was to get the team exfiltrated, then the rest of the plot would divert and redirect the obvious response. But yes, it was indeed high risk - still if you follow the scenario, for those most directly involved there was no chance. It either worked or their exile would be permanent and their country and their families would be forever lost to Communism and a dictatorship. That sort of motivation was more than enough to drive extreme, very high risk actions. I have responded separately and in more detail with some thoughts on "risk" in the Dallas attack: https://larryhancock.wordpress.com/2020/12/11/risk-in-dallas/

I have no doubt that the April meeting involved talk, especially during the drinking sessions, that somebody should kill that SOB. Its also quite likely that talk went into more detail about how such a thing could be done, using well trained Cuban volunteers who they knew hated JFK, even discussing some of the tactics, tools and assets they were all familiar with from their years of efforts to kill Castro. Some level of "plotting", could have developed in those conversations. There is also good reason to believe that independently there had been talk inside some of the Cuban exile groups about not just seeking revenge but removing JFK as an obstacle between them and the overthrow of Castro. We find a letter within the AMWORLD documents, written to Artime and copied to Quintero, that no action against Castro was possible with JFK in the picture. Don't recall the exact date on that but it was that fall. We also know there were threats against JFK as early as his Orange Bowl appearance at the time of the Brigade's return. But what I've tried to do is separate the talk, perhaps even some fairly minimal plotting and actions (such as a rifleman and a bomb associated with that trip to Florida), from what in reality was a much more complex plan (and conspiracy) to kill JFK that focused specifically on Dallas. Look back at the People in Motion section and you find good indications for when the Dallas plot begins and the period in which it evolved. My focus in Tipping Point was to dial down specifically on the conspiracy, the assets and the actors who killed the President in Dallas - I have no doubt some of those people had been talking about killing him before September, but see no solid evidence that a concrete plan was developed. What I do see is that there was a "tipping point" where all that talk jelled into action and a specific plan for Dallas was developed and put into motion in a relatively short period of time.

Mervyn, I do write a good deal about Cummings, Interarms and the CIA in Shadow Warfare - using material which Gary graciously provided and a number of other sources as well. Beyond that you will also find a book written solely about Cummings and the arms trade: https://www.amazon.com/Deadly-Business-Cummings-Interarms-Trade/dp/0393017664/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2FDOQH3J7YRB7&dchild=1&keywords=sam+cummings&qid=1607351632&sprefix=sam+cummin%2Cdigital-text%2C312&sr=8-1

Ron, I was really only offering some insight into the story from contemporary documents - none of which appear to have been reviewed or used by the author of the story. Given that particular remark by Crist is documented I suspect that their might be at least some embellishment of the story - and the TNT would be a good example. As far as his wife was concerned, I've no reason to suspect she didn't reach out to anyone in the CIA that she could - and anyone else for that matter. He was a prisoner, that was public and her pushing any button possible to get his release would be expected. I'd just say his experience is dramatic and personal enough to make a good adventure story and certainly elements of it are provable - but it while its a good story it probably needs a little balance and I thought the documents might help provide that.

Readers might find some background documents interesting: https://www.maryferrell.org/php/cryptdb.php?id=ZRCHEST

“Context for Conspiracy” / Segment 4 of Tipping Point is now available for reading online at the Mary Ferrell Foundation: https://www.maryferrell.org/pages/Tipping_Point_Part4.html

“Context for Conspiracy” / Segment 4 of Tipping Point is now available for reading online at the Mary Ferrell Foundation: https://www.maryferrell.org/pages/Tipping_Point_Part4.html

I have to say I've never really studied him in any depth although I know of the general discussion on him and jogged my memory by looking back at the thread on the forum. His belonging to the Association of Retired Intelligence Officers doesn't really surprise me. This is probably one of the times when its best for me to say I don't have anything to offer about him and don't find him on the direct path I'm trying to follow in Tipping Point. Sorry I don't have anything to contribute, not even an opinion.

One of the key points in bringing a focus on her was her travel in the summer and the fact that the FBI was very seriously trying to interdict all sales. Regardless of any success on her part she should defnitely have been on their radar. When you add in the very real conflict between JMWAVE and JURE you get a complex mix - with her and Dallas standing out as the only entry point for JURE inside the U.S. outside Miami. The documents now let us see how seriously both FBI and CIA were all over such things and if she would not have been under some form of observation would be strange. We also know that JMWAVE used the AMOTs for both dangles and stings (including in Mexico City). Given all that and Sarita's likely association with DRE members at school, we have to think the Odio's would have been an counter intelligence target.

Its not a new find Matt, I wrote about it even in the earlier editions of SWHT. Not sure if its been discussed here before or not, at this point it seem like almost everything has but I could not be sure. It certainly is a key part of the final Dallas story and its chronology and like some topics it not got much discussion in recent years. I can say that I had the opportunity to discuss a few things with Hosty before and after he spoke at a Lancer conference. He was very open on the telephone and brought up several points where he took odds with the official story on Oswald. The single thing he would not discuss was this item. Even when I provided him with a document confirming Patterson's remarks he simply refused to comment. .....there is also another line on this in which a similar remark was made to one or more Dallas Police officers - that became a major bone of contention for a time until they backed off and it dropped out of sight. That's covered elsewhere and in SWHT and I did not insert it into tipping point. It does support the view that the FBI in Dallas was monitoring subversive activities and Oswald showed up during that activity - it may well have been an FBI activity directly involving Heitman rather than Hosty.

Maybe the holidays will help ...grin. Segments 4 and 5 will definitely take some time..