Larry Hancock

Paul, given that I'm the only one around here who has actually published a book on this subject (and helped Seamus in his original article that Jim referenced) I'm going to jump in this far and recommend not my book but a couple of others. First a very good book which addresses your question and several related ones - Mirage Men by Mark Pilkington. Anyone who is seriously interested in how disinformation gets inserted into the UFO subject should give it a read (and yes there are credible national security reasons for some of it given that UFO researchers can serve as an open intelligence collections device for foreign services). An example of one national security response of that nature can be found in Project Beta by Greg Bishop.

Its not something I recall in his books but Jim was not a bashful type in person - for that matter he never portrayed himself as a JFK researcher or a historian of any sort, he represented himself as a reporter, uncovering news items and reporting them. That did enable him to write some pretty lively books on other topics as well - grin. Generally speaking his Lancer presentations were not research pieces like most of the other presenters, they were more in the context of his personal experiences reporting on the assassination and the context of contemporary Dallas - which is where Ruby's club and the twist came into view.

Jim made no secret of his visits to the Carousel.... At a couple of Lancer conferences Jim revisited his twist experience at the Carousel by dancing with Beverly Oliver. ...a bit more slowly than circa 62/63 of course.

James, I'm puzzled, most of the links in the article that I checked go to primary sources, the documents themselves - existing on on the MFF site and available for immediate reference?

Yes, there has been discussion for some years that Barnes had been assigned to Domestic Operations after his role in the Cuba Project and that Hunt was placed there circa 1963. It appears that was sort of a holding area for Hunt, given that he was also working on side activities including a connection to Manuel Artime and the AMWORLD project (even given Henry Hecksher's objection) based solely on his personal friendship with Artime. What exactly Hunt was doing under Barnes in 1963 would be very interesting to know. Beyond that it certainly appears that Hunt was given a cover assignment in Spain circa 1964 in hopes that Artime would develop an autonomous international cover there as well as in Central America. As far as Barnes goes, its important to remember that Domestic Operations included not only the contact activities, and domestic intelligence collections but also the creation of domestic covers in support of CIA operations overseas...that had been something Barnes was involved with even in the years before this particular assignment. Bill's work on the Domestic Contacts group as linked to Oswald is fascinating.....as is his overall theme which is the construction of a legend for Oswald....everyone should give his paper a through read.

Among other things - including his well documented political assessment of Oswald - Bill's new work on the Domestic Contacts Division and its "Guides" is remarkable; the DCD has been discussed here before and Bill really takes it to another level in demonstrating exactly how the Domestic Contacts Division dealt with Lee Oswald.

One of the special things about some in the group was that they had received advanced training in infiltration, exfiltration and a variety of covert field intelligence collection techniques - that came along with their selection for covert maritime operations into Cuba before the Bay of Pig's landings. On their way to those operations out of the Keys, they were selected and received advanced tactical training at the Belle Chase facility in the first months of 1961, a camp very quickly scrapped together and run by Grayston Lynch. At least one of them, Victor Hernandez, had lived in New Orleans while attending college and had family members there.

Hi Anthony, I'll jump in but I'm sure David will join in as well. The reason these fellows (wh0 were DRE affiliated but also were or had been operational with JMWAVE at different points) were outside New Orleans was two fold. First Mike McClaney was funding the bombing project and they were using a rural house owned by his brother to store the materials and second they needed somewhere far away from Florida because their first effort at the bombing mission had been bused by the FBI in Miami. This was not a camp per se, it was a house with a covered porch which housed some of the materials, the rest were in a U Haul which Victor Hernandez had rented in St Louis and used to haul the explosives from the Chicago area (all of this is in a footnote in the paper including a timeline). There is no indication that David Ferrie was involved in this at all, the participants were all from Miami and are named in the FBI investigation. There was a small training camp operating near there at the same time, organized by the MDC out of Miami, that is described as well....after the FBI bust at the McClaney home that camp emptied out pretty quickly and the guys went back to Miami by bus. It has been a short term effort, very minimally funded, the trainees were expected to go to Nicaragua - where Artime was planning to open his MRR camp (a cover for AWORLD). As to Oswald, actually the links between Oswald in New Orleans and our conspiracy suspects in Miami are becoming quite clear...both on the DRE side within DRE itself at its headquarters, but also to two different sections of JMWAVE...within both its foreign intelligence group and the DRE case officers. We tend to think of Oswald not being well known outside New Orleans at that point in time but he was so well known in Miami that DRE sent out press releases about him, sent warning letters to Congress addressing he and the FPCC - and the same material was actually reproduced by other exile groups there. I should add, there is only one instance I am aware of where Ferrie was definitely associated with some sort of potential training camp and that was in the later summer/early fall of 1962. I have photographs of his meeting with and actually flying around Larry DeJoseph scouting for a location for a CRC sponsored camp. This was during the period when Sturgis and Hemming were cooperating on their INTERPEN promotion and the CRC was looking to get out from under the FBI and INS surveillance in the Miami area. As far as I know the camp never really jelled because the Cuban Missile crisis came along and things went a lot of different directions after that. The photos do prove that Ferrie was connected in some fashion to at least LaBorde and Sturgis at that point in time - but that's all I have on it. The connection may well have been via the CRC representative in New Orleans.

I surely hope Steve, whom I met twice in Dallas as I recall, is able to find a local publisher for Ian's work - that normally makes things much easier. Knowing Ian I would expect what he had in print to be in good shape. However if that does not work out there I'm sure Debra at JFK Lancer would take a look at it for Steve.

Duh, I should have said post-BOP Paul, my mistake. The CIA kept running missions like that into Cuba though 1961, with pretty much the same lack of success. As a matter of fact some of the same maritime mission folks that participated in them pre-Bay of Pigs continued in the operations for much of 1961 and into 1962. Victor Hernandez was one of those and he complained bitterly about how badly they were organized...in instances finding the ammunition supplied did not even match the weapons being issued. In Operation Pepe for example John Koch Gene was one of those post BOP volunteers . JMBARR was one of the operations bases used for the missions, at Key West - everyone should check the MFF crypt list, Bill has been adding numbers of new crypts: https://www.maryferrell.org/php/cryptdb.php The supplies mentioned in the document Steve posted were definitely coming from the CIA - I have still seen no sign of any involvement of Skorzeny with the folks we are exploring in the Wheaton leads or for that matter in anti-Castro activities from 59-63. Which is not to say independents may not have met with him. As far as Morales goes, I have him using aliases of Dr. Menza, Nelson Raynock, Henry Benson and Henry Beckoff, but David and Bill may have more, they are working the pseudonyms and aliases in a major fashion and I can't say I'm keeping up with them. They are posting their work in a brand new section on MFF titled "Pseudonyms and Aliases" - that should be mandatory reading for any one following this subject - its ground breaking work: https://www.maryferrell.org/php/pseudodb.php

That's one of the pre-BOP infiltration/supply operations that David and I write about in the Wheaton Lead paper...there were a couple of dozen of them at least, each with their own code name. Most either aborted or failed to connect and deliver. I'm sure David has more details or could give a larger list. Those missions were carried out by the maritime cadre that had trained under Jenkins and then were given advanced training and inserted on missions from bases in the Keys.

To my understanding Ian's son does have his manuscript; I'm not in direct contact with him but I've offered via DPUK to assist if he wants help in publisher and Lancer very likely would help....Debra had offered to publish his DPD book but it never quite got to the stage where he wanted to release it....like many encyclopedic works I suspect they never seem quite done. Per Ron's upcoming read, there is indeed a lot of non-Ruby material in the book but Ian did a good bit of first hand investigative work in Dallas and you will find material from that which is really quite unique. Not all of it made it into the book; I recall Ian presenting on an interview that he had done with a couple of folks who worked in the TSBD. One had been out of town on Friday but returned on Sunday as I recall and just walked into the TSBD, the building was totally unsecured and he walked around much of it seeing nobody or any security. He also said he was frequently not locked until very late at night because people in the different book companies needed to come and go int the evening. When you put that together with Day's remarks about news people and others all over the building you realize how seriously contaminated the building was and how easy it would have been to recover something - like say a rifle stashed in a wooden book packing case or even to plant something that would turn up later. I'll be surprised if Ron doesn't come across some new material in the book....like the Olson contacts or the details of the "line up" that sort of happened but didn't because they didn't get the ID they wanted...

Just for reference, Ian's book No Case to Answer also has a great deal about his research on Ruby including his follow up effort to locate Kathy Kay and Harry Olson....a very suspicious tangent to the whole Ruby Question. I really recommend Ian's book, it is one of the best and probably least read JFK research books, along with William Law's work on Bethesda. Its a shame that Ian's huge, decades long research book on the DPD did not make it into print, it would be the best possible resource on the DPD officers....it would certainly be great if DPUK could help make it happen, his son has the manuscript as I understand it. I'll drop Deb a note that you got the right DVD after all Ron...

Matt, it is hard to imagine - having lived and been a little politically conscious during JFK's Administration - and lived in what we would now call a dark Red state, its hard to convey the depth of personal hatred that did exist against JFK in certain circles. He was considered a traitor to his race, either a full blown closet communist or naive to the point of treason. It was not a period (as it is for some know) to think much about challenges as JFK did, or to be pragmatic, or to compromise....the folks I'm talking about considered themselves at war and you were reacted to everything automatically in knee jerk fashion or you were probably a threat or worse...I know people now who feel almost as strongly about anyone who does not fervently support Donald Trump....actually I hope its "almost", in some instances I'm not certain. Then multiply that for the Cuban exiles discussed in this thread, JFK was seen as not only been cowardly in refusing to confront Castro and Russia militarily but in the process of literally giving away their homeland, their families on the island, their heritage. That's powerful stuff. I have no first hand knowledge, but have been told by people from Miami that those involved were proud of what they had done to their death...most did not have second thoughts as Martino did. And they were respected for their life long struggles against communism and Castro. What they did along the way didn't matter, it was their commitment that counted. What went on in the minds of those who enabled them or knew what they had done is impossible to imagine, maybe that changed over time, maybe not. I can't guess why Jenkins would be so bitter and Quintero apparently not. But given that both men were socially quite close to Wheaton at the time, I get the impression that they felt he had betrayed their confidence and they certainly were not going to do that to men they had been much closer too years earlier.

I think its really hard for us to get inside the heads of combat veterans who fought together and built hugely strong bonds, passed or not their is loyalty to each others memories and for that matter loyalty to each others families. Not to mention having to admit having guilty knowledge and not acting to expose a murder - how many people really want to go public with the worst mistake of their life? Their are just a lot of things wrapped together....I know from John Martino's son that John became very conflicted as time passed. There was not doubt he thought he was doing the right thing at the time and being a patriot....later he came to feel he had probably been used. But he still didn't want to face that and it troubled him. I've been told all those who were involved were very proud of what they had done, it was a strike against communism which they had seen take over their homes and nation...and many of them went on fighting communism over the globe for years. I'm not giving any of that as an excuse but I very much doubt that it has ever been a simple matter of covering up for an agency, anymore simple than it was for the larger number of people who altered evidence, obfuscated the facts afterwards and consciously chose not to do a serious investigation of conspiracy - for a great many reasons, not all of them evil.

A few comments in response... The way we understand it Wheaton was not really a participant in the conversations, as the senior business manager he was essentially the host and Jenkins was the sales guy, trying to loosen up his old trainees and get into position to get the air transport business. The conversations, likely after a good bit of drinking, were among those guys and more likely among Quintero and the Cubans...after all Jenkins had been a senior officer to them, training, dispatching missions. Its not even clear how much he participated since he had not really worked with them for several years at that point in time. So I'm guessing its the Cubans doing most of the talking... As I understand it both Jenkins and Qunitero were personally close to Wheaton at that point and and they trusted him (and worked for him) but he had not been on missions with them, in the field, etc. Also, since what was really going on was all about Nicaragua and about the Contras, and the guys were deeply into that, I suspect that was most of the conversation. Jenkins may only have heard enough to realize these guys all did know something real about the assassination. And rather than questioning them, he went to them directly with an offer to go to a Congressman and broker immunity so they could officially go on the record - with his background in law enforcement I suspect he realized that was the only way to make a difference since anything they told him personally was meaningless and actually contaminated them as potential witnesses (my impression is that law enforcement is never thrilled about having civilians trying to investigate crimes). Stu and others have done some work in this area and it seems that Wheaton tried to get at one Congress person involved, perhaps more than one but without cooperating sources he was just stuck...the outreach to the ARRB was really just one last long shot. I think the other factor is that what was going on in real time about Nicaragua, and a variety of illegal weapons deals, political assassinations etc was more immediately important to him and he really got into the current affairs. Once the guys pushed back on immunity on JFK and cut his legs out from under him in regard to investigating Iran Contra....the JFK thing faded into the background. They made their position really clear. Which is why the best he really could ever do was pass on a lead to them...maybe he hoped one of them (probably Quintero) would change his mind at some point and tell the real story? As to Jenkins, we and others have tried many times to talk to him, his daughter is a most effective gatekeeper for him. He has made it very clear through her and in other ways he wants nothing to do with this...its all lies...the last person I do know that got to talk to him briefly in the last couple of years got that story - but he also still seems to be pretty sharp, telling the caller he never even worked for JMWAVE (which is true, he worked for West Hemisphere and the Cuba Project, not Miami Station). Other people did talk to Quintero and my impression is he really did want to talk and personally was not bitter about Wheaton as Jenkins was....but in the end he didn't, perhaps the guys he knew then were gone but of course they had children that were still living. Thanks for the good words, those of us involved do feel its the real deal - primarily because it has disclosed so much history in regard to those involved and covert actions against Cuba that we were unaware of up to now. Not to mention that all the background Wheaton did provide on Jenkins checks out - at this point we know a lot more about Jenkins and especially about Quintero than Wheaton ever did, which is sort of amazing.

Roger on that...

Eddy, I guess I need to be more clear....I have seen nothing that is solid enough to give me an opinion on where Oswald was during the less than a minute of the shooting. I do not believe he was on the Sixth floor, beyond that I suspect he was "circulating" during the last twenty or so minutes before...in the first floor lunchroom, getting a soda afterwards on the second, back down in the lobby area, very possibly looking out the front door.... I would love to see something totally definitive but those things really don't trouble me any more - my focus is the conspiracy, which I take as a given. Power to those trying to resolve the details at this late date but I've watched that struggle for so long - I'm still interested but I've managed to generally break away from being obsessive about it....my response on this tread was really intended to be focused the issue of control over Oswald.

To me it appears that Oswald drifted all over the place during and after lunch....I don't at all buy the official story of his movements nor do I see any sign he was actually worried about being convicted of shooting the president. As far as I can tell he acted in something of an unpredictable manner ....one of the reasons he could not be allowed to keep on talking and certainly not go into a trial. Did he drift out front....very possibly....its all pretty much an open question to me other than the fact that he was not on the sixth floor firing a rifle at the president.

Thanks Sean, I know SWHT is a slog....but then that's true of most of what I write...grin. I certainly think the photos help, Rex was great to work with us to put so many photos into the Wheaton Leads research paper. I have come to picture Oswald only being at most very loosely maneuvered by the time he gets back to Dallas. With the media legend he established in New Orleans and his time in Russia he was going to be a suspect if either he or a rifle linked to him was anywhere near the scene of the shooting - he said as much himself while in custody. Talk about "usual suspects". Certainly there may have been plans to further frame him after the fact - and likely he was supposed to meet someone at the theater but we don't know the details on that. It was Friday, he was on a time card, he could have clocked out early anyway (not exactly an obsessive worker). And he had even applied for at least one job after taking work at the TSBD. Not to say that he was not "circulating" in Dallas but in reality it was very low profile - Hosty has him meeting with subversives. Nothing like his visibility in New Orleans. Which was desirable, you don't want him picked up in advance or possibly sequestered as a threat during the visit...which could have happened. I'd say Oswald was just being Oswald that day, playing cool (what, is something special going on today?), not out in front with the crowd at the street (how pedestrian) but not doing anything special to implicate himself. And there was always the risk of actually giving him orders...as his buddy Delgado said, one sure way to get him not to do something was to order him to do it. Even if he had been told to do something special, well he probably would have done his own thing.

The answer to that probably lies in the fact that as a "patsy", Oswald only had to be framed / associated with the shooting - as Sandy describes above. The fact that he was not "visibly" on the sixth floor or doing anything which would have made him really obvious as the shooter on the sixth floor suggests that he may well have been under some minor level of manipulation but was not knowingly involved in the attack - no matter what else he might have done related to a rifle being in the building. The fact that his behavior afterwards is so seemingly random also suggests that he was not under any degree of real control that day. One of the real problems for all of us is Monday morning quarterbacking the plan with Oswald as the key element - when of course Oswald as the lone nut single shooter getting all the attention in regard to the assassination is an artifact of the official story line to suppress an investigation of conspiracy, not necessarily of the actual conspiracy plan.

Another thread on Feeney would be good, I wouldn't want to divert this one but in my new book In Denial I describe some brand new information related to Feeney. It appears that he played what could have been a key role in an virtually unknown plan which very possibly would have involved a provocation involving an incident at the Guantanamo Naval Base at the start of the landings at the Bay of Pigs. Such a provocation could well have changed the whole complexion of the American intervention in Cuba. And it would not have been the last such plan Feeny was involved with - for those who have In Denial, you can pursue this in the chapter on Hidden Measures. As to Feeney, his operational association with Izquerdo, who we do go into in this paper, as well as his relationship with Morales are both of interest and further research on what Feeney was doing in 1963 would fit well in a new thread on him.

That was my impression as well Matt, we are going to check for other photos. Also David has confirmed an interview with Chavez in which he confirms he had indeed flown the type of aircraft which was being picked up at Red Bird: MC: Oh,J was flyin because when I came back to actual duty I didn't start flying, but when I became a regular officer, *I went back on flying status, so I was flying C-47s* - anything that moved! MC: Oh, the Caribbean, yeah! Just had a uh, wonderful time! Nicaragua, Guatemala, Central America, and uh, then, in between uh... we also provided transportation to help the uh, missions, and the attaches in South America. *So I'd get a C-47 and we'd take supplies to Peru, Chile, and Argentina, and Brazil. So we were flying all over Latin America.* Looks like a fit for the remark on his flying experience that January made...

Wow, that's sort of confusing....I wonder if that copy is unintentionally confabulating incidents and people in some fashion....why would January take the time to note the fact that the fellow spoke with no accent if he was fair complected and an apparent Anglo. Or would he take the trouble to note the lack of any regional accent. David is looking for other photos of Chavez - check this one out: https://www.fold3.com/page/85369970-manuel-j-chavez/ That sort of takes me back as there was some confusion about different aircraft being stripped and configured for different purposes. At one time I thought it might be a gunship prototype for that new AF program, out of Hulbert field in Florida. Strangely the F-111 radar part of the story dovetails tangentially with a separate story of radar test aircraft being used for the F-111 project and a fellow who came up with the log of one demonstration flight of one of the new systems on a very low level, high speed flight over the Alleghenies...what was interesting was that one of the entries on the passenger log was "Jack Ruby" and the flight was out of DC. Spent a lot of time on that one. This almost sounds like its mixing the two stories as those aircraft flying the special radar controlled flight packages were certainly not transports. The whole challenge was tracking and flight control at very high speed. And of course "later on" in Matthew's copy would be a matter of days, from the Cuban pilot doing the acceptance... What is clear from the FAA paperwork is that the aircraft in question was sold to the Houston Air Center and kept on its books for a couple of years before being sold on to a Mexican carrier. Of course nothing is ever simple...sigh. In this instance I think the driver has to be the level of detail about the Cuban pilot - I will say that I went over all this a number of times with Matthew himself, our discussions centered on the pilot as January's interactions with the other individual that week in November were very limited and all we were left with were the dialog with the pilot and what I managed to dig up on the aircraft itself. That was with help from Alan Kent and a very nice FAA employee who requested to remain anonymous. Of course the Houston Air Center historian was very helpful - up to the point where the identify of that aircraft was tied down .. Matthew himself did not have the final details on the aircraft when he was initially writing up the incident, simply because January would did not want the aircraft number released until after his death - and only then could we confirm things and really begin tracking. . So....confirmation of any of this would rest with the pilot and with any confirmation that might have come from Chavez - at this point it has to remain intriguing but speculative, based on what we can confirm about AMWORLD and Chavez travel to Mexico in that time frame.

I don't find that in my writing on Red Bird but I may have missed it, perhaps Mathew Smith noted that somewhere. As best I can see January never really interacted with him; he just showed up with the Cuban pilot and exited immediately - I think he showed up again when the plane departed but January said nothing about talking with him - not sure who signed the acceptance papers, likely the pilot who had actually done the work and held the FAA certifications to do so. The officer/civilian appears just to have been along for the ride and not around the balance of the week. All the remarks I find in a quick check are about the Cuban who January notes spoke English with no accent - which seems to have made an impression on January. Apparently the Colonel was in civilian clothes and it was the Cuban who told him the other man was actually an Air Force officer.