Larry Hancock

Well Richard, I will close out by simply saying the image discussed here is the same as that from a negative I obtained from AMKW and I received it as the photo she described as being of someone discussed as possibly being Oswald. My and others take on the resemblance is subjective. Clearly you have a different view and attitude about it. Your take is your own but I was simply trying to be helpful; I have attempted to contact AMKW about her collection but so far with no luck. I will post if I hear something from her but otherwise I'm done with this thread.

Looks good Mark, if its not Oswald its certainly someone who could be mistaken for him.

Well done Robin!! it is the top one you posted (that's why I was a little hesitant because I did remember that it had the two men in the foreground) This image blowup is at least as good and I think better than what I obtained and it appears to me the shirt may actually be an Oswald match, just an impression. It is important to reference the timing to the other photo though, because that puts the figure in the right time frame for the Rambler.

I think so Rob although until I find it I'm not going to be absolutely sure....like many people I have recently been sorting and cleaning and its not where I first looked. As I recall it was this photo and I got a negative from AMKW, took it too a photo shop and had him crop it to just the area of interest and blow it up as far as possible while retaining some detail. As you can imagine the detail was enough to suggest it was a young male of the right age, hair cut, etc but not a lot else. From this view you can tell the individual was walking with or close to another and it is indeed at just the time the Rambler is approaching down Elm street.

I would not be able to judge how fast they were moving but it appears to be a walk rather than a sprint. It would probably be a match for the pace, timing and direction of the fellow reported as going down to get picked up by the Rambler. I have the negative as I recall, and a blown up print...but of course this was all 25 years ago now and it has been discussed many times and appeared on line in the earlier years (it may also be on one of the two Trask books, can't recall for sure), its just not too good a photo and the guys are at a distance in it. I got the negative to see what a blow up could accomplish...turned out, not much. Anna Marie has been in poor health for years and has not been really active in research for some time, probably since her major research work for Twyman when he did his book. It may be hard to appreciate that for some of us many of these topics are very old news and we have seen them discussed over and over again.....starting back on the Compuserve JFK forum. I don't have a scanner or I would upload an image of it. I should also note that I'm just about to recycle a few hundred pounds of my own old document collection, to a large extent because its a duplicate of what is on MFF. And a great deal of the more unique material was publised long ago by JFK Lancer and is available on CD (including my Chrisman/Beckham documents). However there are some things that are not, for whatever reason. If somebody wants to drop buy and box it up to do something with it that would be fine with me.

I worked in person with Anna Marie's collection for a good while in the 90's, and I actually have that photograph you refer to...it shows a man resembling Oswald going down the East side of the knoll, however he appears to be walking close to or with another man. I had it blown up to the extent I could at that time but it certainly was not clear enough for me to say more than the individual did resemble Oswald. Anna Marie had wanted to donate her collection to a local university in Wichita Falls but that may have proved impossible; I do have an old number and can call her...have not talked to her for some years now. As far as her document collection goes (you can tell what she personally collected as she marked everything with AMKW), the vast majority it if was documents from NARA available as of the eighties and nineties, including some special requests she did for Noel Twyman when she was working on his book. That sort of material would largely be on MFF now. Beyond that she also had a considerable collection of JFK memorabilia. I'll call and ask about her collection if I can reach her.

The great thing is that that we know a good deal more now about the operational details for a couple several reasons. First we now have all segments of the CIA IG report, with nothing restricted. Second, we have the all sections of the CIA Historians report, especially the last section which is quite polemic but very educational - perhaps more importantly the CIA Historian's report quotes and reference the Taylor Commission report/transcript in great detail and that has never been released up to this point. The historian was simply allowed access for his work. That is extremely important because it gives a much deeper view into what the administration level participants knew and didn't know and either misunderstood (Cabell) or totally misrepresented (Dulles and Bissell) - sometimes simply by not commenting. Kennedy Administration participants would talk about JFK's directives or issues like the uprising and there would simply be no CIA reality check on what was being assumed. Beyond that, we have access to what the CIA military leaders (Esterline and Hawkins) were told by Bissell, on certain instructions given to the Brigade leaders and to what the two CIA officers detailed to the landing (Lynch and Robertson) were told and assumed as operational doctrine. The disconnects become obvious and depressing. In point of fact both Esterline and Hawkins ultimately related that Bissell had told them the D Day air strikes were cancelled by JFK but that after seeing all the information they had to conclude that to be a lie, as with many other things Bissell had told them. And beyond all that, thanks to some deep digging in the documents, only over the last two years, and a lot of crypt cracking by my friends David Boylan and Bill Simpich, we have operational level documents that give us a whole new reality check. Several things emerge from that, the fact that the Brigade Air control had no direct communications with the beachead, that the landing force had no direct communication with the aircraft over the beach head, that the Navy was using different radio frequencies - the screw ups are immense. One of the most pitiful documents describes a message from Brigade air to the Navy desperately pleading with them to make sure they provided air cover for the American pilots which had been allowed to fly a last ditch air strike - that message was sent after the Navy had totally failed at that task. You can read the frustration in the messages at that point, especially when Brigade air refuses to send any more volunteers. And your comment on the air strike is right on the money, it would have made little difference. The Joint Chiefs had already pointed out that the logistics support for any sustained supply of the beachead was very questionable, their caution was that it would ultimately collapse without an almost immediate island wide uprising. When you dig until the shortage of Brigade transport pilots you quickly see why. When you find that given the desperate nature of the supply situation at the end of Day 1, the US Air Force was authorized to fly supply drops over the beach with American transports - and were unable to do so, you realize how poor the planning was. But then you also get into the "Hidden Measures" that only Bissell and a handful of others knew about, very likely including what appears likely to have been a dramatic, fake provocation attack against Guantanamo that literally blew up in the face of the ONI personnel and Cuban volunteers involved. Which would of course explain the fighter bombers on the Essex and the ground attack munitions JFK was not told about.

Well to begin with, I would certainly say that this assessment is true " betrays a stunning failure by the CIA to have effectively communicated its plan to the president". As I said in the earlier post there was never a full operational brief for the President, many of the Cuba Project review meetings involved his new senior staff but not JFK himself. And in an effort to distance the US from the landings, he certainly did not directly oversee the operation during the final hours before the landings. Nor was he given detailed operational assessments by the the military operations leaders, most especially not by Col. Hawkins. The fact that JFK was not fully briefed on the importance of the total destruction of the Cuban Air Force nor by the initial raids failure to do so was critical. Even the JCS staff report had pointed out that risk, stating that the total success of the landings would be at risk if even a single Cuban aircraft was able to attack the supply ships. The JCS assessment also stressed the absolute necessity for a simultaneous, major Cuban resistance effort - the CIA chose not to inform the JFK or his staff of the fact that UNIDAD had been crushed weeks before the landings and that it had no intelligence that any such uprising would occur (a fact only discovered later by both the CIA IG and the CIA Historian). I'm not going to say that JFK was guilty of any stunning failure of oversight, however at that early point in his administration he did trust the CIA, and for that matter the Joint Chiefs, far more than he would within only a few weeks - that became obvious during his much more critical review of the crisis in Laos. If you actually look at JFK's limited operational directives, and at the NSAM he issued for the project, you find both largely disconnected from the actual operation - personally I blame that on the fact that the briefings being conducted by the CIA, primarily by Bissell (with Cabell setting in), can now can be seen as hugely limited and superficial. Those briefings were almost entirely disconnected from the people directly involved in the operation itself. That was the conclusion of both the CIA's own IG and the CIA's historian as well as in the Taylor Commission Report, Iin particular Cabell is pictured as so totally clueless that he not only contributed nothing worthwhile to the discussions but frequently passed on incorrect details or totally muddled matters. The military leaders later assessed both Bissell and Cabell of not knowing enough to conduct briefings and certainly not experienced enough in amphibious operations to be reliable. Based on the woefully incompetent briefings JFK was indeed approving things piecemeal and all is remarks reflect that what he had directed was considerably different than what was actually being implemented. As I said earlier, I don't think JFK was indeed aware of the operational details or the criteria for success in the pre-D Day strikes, nor was he briefed on the final damage assessments. What he did do after those strikes and his their media exposure was ask Bissell to dial down the visibility of the air campaign. Bissell himself translated that to a total cancellation of the D Day strikes and totally failed to argue the necessity of controlling the air space over the landing. What we do know for sure is that JFK had ordered all ships to be well at sea by dawn; he had also ordered the landing to be aborted and the Brigade evacuated if the landing was discovered and it met serious resistance - both of which occurred. As it turned out there had been no plans made for any abort or evacuation at all. JFK was also not told that mainline American Army tanks were being landed on the beach - a fact which would have overridden any concept of "deniablity" in the landings. I'll leave any more detailed response to the book, which uses a lot of new operational documents to actually take this step by step though the four months when what Eisenhower had approved as the Cuba Project was totally changed into something quite different by Bissell. Something far different than the totally deniable operation which Eisenhower had approved and which JFK allowed to proceed.

Unfortunately Kornbluh was working from some of the earliest information available; we know a great deal more based on more recently released documents and materials. Kornbluh was also not privy to the remarks of the military operations chiefs which were made in the 90's when they had a chance to review the new materials themselves. It would really be a good idea to catch up on all the most recent resources that I cite in my 2020 book, including Grayston Lynch whose own book contains a great deal of good information - such as his remarks in regard to hearing only on the way to the landings that the final planned D Day air strikes had been called off... One of the great many problems with the operation was that JFK himself appears to have been given no detailed operational review of the plan at all, nor was he operationally involved during the run up to the landing, the landings themselves or the events on the beacheads. It was only later that he learned that a good number of his high level directives - including his order that all ships be well away from Cuba and at sea by sunrise, that no plans had been made to evacuate the Brigade if they met opposition, etc. In regard to Bissell as a source, his own operational commanders concluded that he had routinely lied to them, telling JFK one thing and those under him another. In reviewing his later comments its also obvious that he himself was one of the major problems with the project; as the CIA's own IG concluded.

JFK did approve a pre-landing D Day strike, however after the flap at the UN over the earlier air strikes and press exposure that those had indeed been launched from outside Cuba and were not defecting pilots, JFK asked that the air strikes be minimized. Bissell chose not to go into the tactical concerns of air cover over the beachhead and turned JFK's remark into a cancellation order. Bissell did not tell JFK or Bundy that the conservative post attack damage estimate was that up to half of the Cuban air force might be still operational - he simply ordered the strikes canceled. Given that the operation's military commanders had been screened from the high level briefings that meant that JFK was not getting the full details on how exposed the landing ships were to attack. Bissell had also made sure JFK and Bundy were not told that those operational commanders had actually submitted their resignations over the air cover issue or that they had only stayed on because Bissell assured them he would obtain expanded air strikes from JFK - instead he seriously reduced them. Although there would have been time to call off the landings, neither Bissell nor Cabell chose to talk to JFK about the issue of the last minute strike cancellation - Bissell later said that he didn't feel it was a big issue because the ships were supposed to be well at sea by dawn (which either reflects that Bissell had no clue about the complexity of the landing operation or that he lied though his teeth). In reality, given how close the Cuban airfields were and given that the landing had been detected early on, its also arguable that the originally planned air strikes would not have taken out the Cuban aircraft even if they had been launched (the volunteer group's night time mission record was all that good). We do know that the Cuban aircraft were over the beach and attack at first daylight. I cover all this in obnoxious detail in my new book In Denial, if you want to discuss the overall operation and what was and what was not approved, either message me or email at larryjoe@westok.net.

Actually I believe it was Dick Russell who thought Masen was a dead ringer for Oswald (after personally interviewing him) and wrote that in his book...I could never see that at all, and was shocked when I first saw Masen's actual photo after some tireless researchers finally tracked it down. For a couple of options - and what I feel are closer - alternatives to folks who could have impersonated Oswald at one point or the other, check my web page at www.larry-hancock.com Once there take a look at the contents of Someone Would Have Talked (menu at bottom of home page and look in the photo areas for the section referenced as "Mistaken Identity". Steve Wilson and William Seymour could probably have pulled it off.

In reference to In Denial and the previous post, a friend of mine has now obtained the flight deck log books from the Independence super carrier and they confirm that my new findings in the book. The Independence sailed out of Norfolk in advance of the landings and formed a task group while sailing off Florida. The group included the guided missile cruiser USS Boston and the command ship (heavy cruiser) USS Northampton. The group was off Cuba and available to deploy strike aircraft; it was operating directly off the island as the Brigade began its surrender - that task group alone had the power to crush the Cuban military; just as the carrier Essex could have taken out much of the Cuban forces on the south side of the island using ground attack aircraft which JFK had been secretly deployed at sea. JFK was totally unaware of the ground attack aircraft on the Essex as well as the major deployment of the Independence group - the carriers could have almost immediately crushed the Cuban military if he had granted the Admiral's request to directly attack the Cuban military. The information about the Independence task group - as well as the ground attack aircraft on the Essex - was totally suppressed and never appears in any of the official inquiries which JFK directed, nor is it mentioned in the CIA study or the CIA historian's extensive writing on the Navy's performance in regard to the Bay of Pigs.

You are quite right Vasilios, I had really only wanted to let Chris know that documents did exist on Vallee - way to easy to get sucked into a diversion, my apologies and I will cease and desist as of this post.

The names would appear two places, in the FBI advisory to the SS that Bolden described (which actually might or might not have contained specific names) and in the Secret Service paperwork on what went on in Chicago in response (including a major blunder by SS agents as described by Bolden). Bolden himself relates that the SS file on the incident was taken out the office and sent to DC. Later inquiries by the ARRB seem to corroborate that because both agents and office staff totally stonewalled them regarding the incident and the paperwork. To answer your question as to why it was suppressed, I think this incident and others did indeed very much reveal that JFK was at risk that fall, that the Secret Service knew that and took special precautions in response. We certainly know they did on his trip to Florida a short time later. And we know that against ARRB instructions, several SS trip files from that fall were destroyed. So yes, in that regard I do think paperwork was actually destroyed, possibly some as late as the 1990'sand that it would have revealed concerns and possibly special precautions (possibly confirming that the Secret Service took some special PRS measures which ended up being not nearly enough). Not something they wanted to come under scrutiny, especially public scrutiny. As to the FBI side of it, if the individuals being warned about were involved with DRE, as I think they were, the FBI was in an interesting bind - they repeatedly were involved in surveillance of DRE and in efforts to abort their weapons and explosives buys. And they knew that DRE was making very hostile statements against JFK. But while selling weapons and explosives was illegal, buying them, or tying to buy them was not. We even have an example I cover in detail where the FBI conducted an extensive investigation and even took certain DRE members into custody for explosives buys in Illinois, but ultimately had no grounds to actually charge them. Not only that, but several of them had been used by the CIA previously, were involved in ongoing CIA projects, and would be taken into a new one within weeks - only to essentially go black and off the grid until showing up off shore following the assassination.

As far as I can tell the only individual actually arrested in Chicago as a threat to the President was Vallee (who had made a verbal if generic threat, officially reported to the Secret Service). However he was only charged and convicted in regard to his possession of the hunting knife. The guys the Secret Service were warned about by the FBI were picked up were questioned by the Secret Service but then handed off to police for questioning and released uncharged - because there was no actual evidence against them and nothing overtly illegal that would have supported charges. However I suspect the FBI investigation of Echeveria does reveal the group the two were associated with, if not their exact names (perhaps one name). In any event, I'll be discussing that more and how their appearance in Chicago relates to events in Dallas in my work that will be appearing on MFF in a month or so. Of course that will just be my take on things.

Chris, Vallee's Secret Service PRS files have been available for years as have his Chicago arrest files; I obtained several hundred pages of them and wrote about him from those circa 2006. The HSCA investigation of him is also available. If you check my Wordpress blog you should find that HSCA material linked in my posts on him. https://larryhancock.wordpress.com/2018/12/26/the-chicago-threat-part-1/ For reference, the SS routinely interviewed him for several years after the assassination based on the per-assassination report to them that he might constitute a threat to the president; they carried that same line of inquiry forward to monitor whether or not he presented a potential threat to LBJ.

Perhaps surprisingly, the push to support the British was less about oil and more about the knee jerk anti-Communism of that era. The CIA and both John and Foster Dulles went to great lengths to whip up fears of the Iranian Communist party taking control and putting the Soviets on the Gulf (which of course the Soviets definitely wanted). The intervention with the British was positioned primarily with that motive - part of the global Soviet blocking move with our WWII allies. It was the same huge mistake we made in continuing to back the French establishment in SE Asia - where the decision was that we had to support British and French economic colonialism in order to ensure they could push back against the Soviets in Europe....more gut level fear of communism and no understanding or empathy at all for the wave of anti-colonialism and nationalism wave which followed the end of World War II.

David, there is not doubt about that, the US actually was supporting the Iranian govt for a time in oil negotiations with the British but there was so much fervor for the Brits that sympathies turned -- we have extensive detail from the National Security meetings, State Dept documents and memos from both State and CIA in Iran. I went into extensive detail on that and quoted/cited a lot of those documents in Creating Chaos. The British also introduced a naval blockade as part of their political action in the negotiations, very effectively from an economic standpoint....we took the same idea covert and more aggressively a few years later in Indonesia. In Iran we followed the British and worked political warfare against the regime jointly with them.

I've had some extensive posts on Mertz and Soutre on my blog; Steve probably remembers them...might be worth taking a look there - we had some good give an takes on it a couple of years ago.

I'm with Cliff, first you need to deal with the real Monsters...

Pete, he is welcome to email me directly at larryjoe@westok.net... I've met him a couple of times in Dallas, along with his Dad. Even sent a bottle of Shiner Bock beer home with him (empty of course) once.

Thanks Pete, I hope Steve gets in touch with me ( and you can message his email to me if you like). Given the shape its in its possible Debra might publish it via JFK Lancer (she had agreed to do that for Ian years ago) or we might also get it published as an incomplete, research work by the Mary Ferrell Foundation.

The reports do talk about tramps being taken into custody in the yard on the other side of the bridge, by the postal office complex. Its possible that these three may even have been brought across the bridge and down by the TSBD. I've found no indications of other tramps being taken into custody in the Bowers rail yard area and given his attention to detail about cars and other suspicious things he observed I have to doubt he would not have mentioned something simple like that. If memory serves the only cars in the yard actually at the time of the shooting - and until Bowers released rail traffic - were the three cars being used as temporary officers by the railroad, the ones with the steam line running to them. We have photos of police around them and on top of them but no reports on their being searched... What does seem fair to say is if the three tramps were taken into custody in a box car in Bowers yard he missed it...and they would have been in a car that had come from downtown into the well after the attack in the plaza...something like an hour or more....not in one that had been in the yard during the attack.

For reference, Lee Bowers reported seeing an individual inside an open hopper car (not a box car) looking down from his position in the tower, the car was on a train moving into the yard from downtown Dallas and the engine was pulling it out of his yard over the bridge. He stopped the train, and held it for police. One man, not in a box car. Bowers made no remarks in his statements about seeing tramps in boxcars or seeing them or anyone else taken into custody and removed by police in the yard behind the fence.

At the risk of being both annoying and repetitive. this give me a chance to point to the three young woman who show up early in this clip. Later footage not shown here but captured in other images shows that the individual everyone things is Shelley but who I identify as Thomas Beckham later walked over, greeted one of the women, stands closely besides her and they both talk to the two other girls. This is interesting in that Beckham had recently married an underage Latino girl and he himself said he passed by the Oswald street leafleting and saw Oswald....he was working as a radio DJ at a station down the street. My guess is that he was going out with his new wife and she was there waiting for him with her girlfriends as he came down the street by the leafleting. Unfortunately I don't have a scanner to post a photo of him with the young women but since they do show up here I thought I would make a pest of myself one more time....I suspect it was from footage in this film clip which got cut for the broadcast. I doubt this changes anyone's mind on Shelley vs Beckham but I would encourage anyone interested to search for the images of the man and young women together. Unfortunately at this point its been so long I don't even remember where I found it in the first place, probably been a good 15 years ago at this point.