Larry Hancock

I think David and I will be offering an view of what was going on with Oswald during the fall of 1963, including how he was manipulated in Dallas (and by whom), however its an elaboration on our previous work, not some brand new revelation. For that matter I have no idea where a totally confirming revelation would come from at this point in time - wish I did. As for myself, I have drafted a new and lengthy, albeit rather contrarian, view of Lee Harvey Oswald which may become available at some point. It is my personal assessment of how he has been put into boxes, and an effort to break him out into a more three dimensional character acting on his own agendas and against his own ideological world views. I anticipate that as the last piece of work I'll do on this topic. -- Larry

That is what I heard as well Evan, plus their was extensive admiration for Rip Robertson....the guys he worked with trusted him to always back them up personally regardless of CIA practices or rules and he did so. That is also why it was so easy for him to recruit for the Congo. Its hard to overestimate the value of the "band of brothers" bond.

From the memo it appears the photo in question was taken of someone at the Soviet embassy...."thought to be Oswald". On another note I can say that Hosty was quite clear during his talk at a Lancer conference and later with me personally that his FBI buddies in MC told him in no certain terms that they had heard Oswald was under surveillance in MC and had been photographed.

Thanks Evan, obviously I can't guarantee it but more and more things have lined up with that view over time (including things I had no idea of and was not even searching for, always a positive sign) - I've run into a number of folks from the Miami area who have described knowing a something about it, talking to guys that came back from Dallas, and maintained that it was fairly general knowledge among certain communities of interest there - but none were willing to go on record and in at least one instance we were unable to get someone who did know details to put it on record for release after their death. At this point its a pretty solid working hypothesis but I'm not sure what could move it into certainty. At least I feel better about it after following a host of leads that didn't pan out over the last 30 plus years. -- Larry

I should point out that this sort of action is almost standard practice in a national crisis. When MLK was shot both Hoover and the AG issued statements within hours that it had been a single shooter, and was not part of some ultra right racist conspiracy. The AG later admitted that it was simply damage control and they had no idea other than they needed to try and try and control the public reaction as much as possible. The first response is always to seize control of the message and calm the public as as much as possible. You see it at all levels of government.

Rex will be speaking on this at the JFK Lancer conference in Dallas this November, if you find it interesting bring notes so you can catch him for one on one discussions.. For what its worth Mr. Boylan and I will also be revisiting the Red Bird leads study in our conference presentation so you can bring notes for us as well...you can catch David in the hallway or me in the bar...grin.

Without going too far afield I would highly recommend Bart's work in regard to conflicts in the witness statements and observations in regard to Baker/Truly and the encounter on the second floor. Especially since many of the witnesses made remarks counter to the official scenario quite early. It would have been really interesting to see that play out in court. I've run across a number of the contradictions Bart highlights over the years of my reading but he does an excellent job of capturing them all and putting them in a form where readers can make their own decisions - or at least become fully aware of the conflicts in testimony.

I wrote about their being outed and even reported by the press at their docking locations in Florida. However my impression was that they might have continued to support Commando Mambises and approved sabotage missions though the end of the year if not longer....David B may know but I didn't follow the mother ships past their initial exposure myself.

There are extensive discussions of physical surveillance and tracking of individuals in Mexico City, you can find them in the station history and in Bill Simpich's work State Secrets - which references the selection, training and operational activities of the field surveillance teams who were trained to conduct observations and photo surveillance. The Cuban Intelligence group (AMOTS) in Miami were also trained in and conducted both types of surveillance - in Miami and possibly elsewhere; they did training for the Mexico City personnel.

Joe, my comment was intended to convey how gun focused politics has become all over the country, I didn't say it made sense or was legal but it certainly reflects a level of paranoia over rights and a level of anti-government phobia that I've never seen in some 70 years of living even in deeply conservative regions where I heard conversations about burying guns to keep them away fromt he government when Eisenhower was president for heavens sake.

Jonathan is correct, unless you folks live in an open carry state you don't know how common its become...I see open carry pistols in the grocery store, restaurants, McDonalds etc. And at political events where is is very common for MAGA types to show up with hand guns and rifles to assert their rights. Especially at the few events where Democrats are having open meetings. Not saying that is the case here but seeing weapons in public is quite common, when I was growing up rifles and shotguns were common in hunting seasons but that was just a way of life, this is all political, with statements being made.

Well we posted here about it, I blogged about it, it posted on the Lancer Facebook page, it was and is featured on the MFF Book listings but I'm not sure how it gets publicity unless folks talk about it? Unfortunately its not like there is a mainstream publisher with a PR Dept promoting it - although John's work work and findings deserve as much attention as the main topic of discussion on the forum at the moment IMHO - they include the suppression of evidence by both the LAPD criminologist and overt suppression and malfeasance in the treatment of the crime scene evidence. Anyway, its on Amazon, by John Hunt and the title is Buried in Plain Site (which refers to the crime scene as the site) https://www.amazon.com/Buried-Plain-Site-Search-Murder-ebook/dp/B0BR5WWY3Y/ref=sr_1_9?crid=12PGYXAC66XOI&keywords=john+hunt+robert+kennedy&qid=1694640536&s=books&sprefix=john+hunt+robert+kennedy%2Cstripbooks%2C146&sr=1-9

JFK Lancer published his extensive work on the RFK case in a book last year and its available on Amazon. I think Stu managed to recover a good amount of his JFK material but as far as I know its not been put online anywhere was a matter of recovering everything that could be found on his laptop which his sister did save and make available. I'll ask Stu about the CE 399 material. Anything he had up on the Lancer site has been archived as well, its just a matter of getting that site up again which has been a struggle but will be a priority after the upcoming conference.

Jim, to your question on Kellerman, I can't cite you the exact source, but it comes from Burkley and in it he takes the responsibility for telling the SS agents that Jackie has told him - in tears and in shock - that she will not leave JFK's body, ever (she did the same thing at the airport in DC) and if the Dallas people i.e. Rose who she does not know are going to hold the body then she will stay in Dallas. Burkley thinks that might well drive Jackie further into shock or worse and tells the agents all this - given their emotional state already they are not going to let Rose or any Dallas people (they mentally blame Dallas already) take the body from them - if they have to fight they will, if the have to shoot - well at that point they trust none of the locals. As it describes it the confrontation with Rose had nothing to do with legality but everything about remorse, extreme stress and emotion etc. Hopefully someone can find Burkley's statement, I don't know that I cited it but for some reason it never gets much attention. Perhaps it was in an oral history or interview but he takes full responsibility for the incident.

I certainly would agree about witness intimidation - self or otherwise - over the following days/weeks but I'm still maintaining that didn't happen instantaneously - certainly not to law enforcement nor would I consider Landis a "witness". I'm not even saying that part of what he says is not true (still would like a photo of him at or looking into the limo though). If he had said, hey I saw fragments, I found an entire bullet, I removed it and put it on a gurney and then realized I had screwed up and told - somebody in authority - then I could see it. As it is he just joins several other people in positions of legal authority who later anecdotally described fragments, holes in the windshield, bullets, pieces of bone, etc who handled evidence and failed to document it or report it. Its a wonder they didn't lose the body.... What I am saying is that I'm not giving him a break for doing something incredibly stupid with evidence and then implying that he was under some sort of immediate pressure not to immediately report or document what he had done/not done - because it might make waves. I would even have cut him a break if he had written a letter to the HSCA and tried to get on the record quietly as Burkley did.

Jim, I would have to know a lot more detail about who said that to Perry to accept that as "pressure" in respect to what I was talking about as far as some sort of self induced hesitance for law enforcement in respect to collecting and handling evidence within an hour or so of the attack. It is not unusual for law enforcement to try and shut down comments to the media in regard to the investigation (ie don't give away what we know or don't know, especially in regard to medical matters) but Landis does not say someone shut him up, he seems to imply he did it to himself for some unstated reason....or that he simply screwed up any standard evidence handling protocol strictly on his own (which is what it sounds like he is claiming).

Impaired judgement certainly could be a factor, although he says there was not drinking Debra Conway interviewed the club owner who freely admitted they kept liquor and served it at the club (I think he said something like "why would somebody be here at 3AM drinking coke"?) and all the patrons including the SS were drinking; he even said an agent came in some time afterwards and asked him not to say that since things had been really hard on the agents and they really didn't need charge that along with everything else... On the other hand, after the shooting and the car ride their systems should really have been peaked out by chemicals and if nothing else I'd expect them to be hyper - but diminished faculties would go nicely with incompetence if he wants to admit that - I'm just not willing to give him any sort of break in regard to some sort of special concern being in play about reporting and handling the evidence properly in order not to make waves in the first couple of hours after the attack....

I think I have to chime in here with what I think would be a critical point - that is the reality that within one to two hours of the attack on JFK there was no "pressure" at all on any law enforcement officer to "toe the line" media wise. At that point it was a totally open criminal investigation and many officers were collecting possible evidence of all types and documenting it - many very poorly - but I see no evidence of any innocent explanation for something as obvious as a bullet fragment or bullet not to being reported to a senior agent or officer, shown to a fellow officer, marked in place or officially collected as evidence and taken into custody. It is true that the Secret Service seems to have been very casual about handling evidence and you can explain that with poor training, bad supervision, or the chaos of the moment. In other words if you want to give Landis a pass you can treat him as incompetent or derelict in his duties but mishandling evidence so dramatically that early would not be a sign of pressure, or fear of rocking the boat since there was no official story and no LN artifice in place at that time. I would also encourage a through photo study to see if Landis ever shows up in the Parkland photos in the vicinity of the car or if any of his movements were documented in the news photography that afternoon.

That seems perfectly reasonable to me, the only thing I can offer with any certainty is that team members were in Dallas doing assessments and collecting details for the attack a week to two in advance. Exactly where and how they prepped the shooters on their positions and gave them ranges and markers is a separate question. As a side note I don't think there was any effort to disguise multiple weapons being in use since the whole MO was for it to be a multi-shooter, attack pointing towards Cuba. The hoops that had to be jumped through to conceal what the planners would have assumed to be obvious are what keeps us all perpetually running in different directions.

One of the things the guys at WAVE learned was that any operation they planned which involved the participants knowing any level of detail was quickly compromised - because the Cubans talked among each other. A cultural thing that they came to accept. So the practice became to keep them all on call, have them on the payroll, but since you were working with training people you only needed to give them the minimum logistics orders until they were assembled at the mission launch site. Not you might still find gossip that was something was going to happen.....but it would be all over the place. Just like the gossip we find about JFK being at risk starting in the late summer time frame. What I can't seem to get across is that this was not a new type mission, an infantry ambush against a soft target does which involves no more than a dozen or so people is not a massive operation and the trade off is always how much prep time is actually required balanced with the tolerance for leaks. In this case I suspect the tactical team had a few weeks notice in regard to a mission but that they were then isolated, transported and put under strict control in the Dallas area while all elements were finalized and rehearsed. I know everybody wants something more but its the small scale, special operations with highly trained people that actually work...the ambush/sniper attacks on Castro had required no more than half a dozen people with some minimal support by locals and then they more often failed due to leaks than anything else.

Steve, I would venture that it was a combination, almost all these guys got initial infantry training from Jenkins in Panama and then advanced guerilla training in Nicaragua. The when the project was changed from strictly guerilla action to the conventional Brigade they were pulled off for special infil/exfil training first at the camp south of New Orleans and then moved on for actual missions into Cuba from the maritime base in the Keys. Afterwards several of them worked occasional missions for WAVE or were on call but detached. I think they were hand picked and selected for Dallas the same way Robertson later picked guys to go to the Congo....then possibly not even pulled together until they arrived in Dallas a week or so early. Plenty of time to reconnoiter and dry run, especially if they had local info available from somebody like Ruby or even one or two of the Dallas local DRE types who knew the city and could play support roles. All very similar to the Cuban ops they had done previously. "Training" was long past for these sorts of folks, mission planning and prep was more the order of the day. But when you know the route, the starting and stopping point etc, too much time leads to leaks and sloppiness. Remember, their main advantage, as with all special ops, was going to be surprise - they get two to five minutes before anybody really begins to understand what just happened.

Eddy, if you read the last section of Tipping Point, which is free on Mary Ferrell, I do go into the actual process in considerable detail, even with references to standard infantry ambush manuals and tactics. I really would have hoped most folks would have read that by now...sigh. Its part of the material in Section 5 https://www.maryferrell.org/pages/Tipping_Point.html

Mike as I recall it, yes the report was an FBI report discussing something that had come from DPD but the actual DPD report never surfaced - sort of the same situation as the Frazier polygraph. I don't know how it could have been debunked without the original report - which was supposedly just a call in to DPD from an unnamed citizen. For all we know that could have been just a test, a hoax, a mistake etc. The point I was trying to make was that even if it had been a hoax it was not passed on to SS nor were any special security measures taken because of it. Basically the Plaza area as well as almost all the motorcade route was a soft target where only traffic and crowd control measures were in place. The only evidence of what one would describe as "hard" security was at the Trade Mart. There was no security zone of control around the plaza or anywhere else to monitor people coming in or search them, show ID etc. That would all have been laughable to the guys who were used to making missions in and out of Cuba.

This would not be a deniable operation so tracing would not be an issue, weapons going back to the general commercial market would be just fine since Castro associated actors could easily pick them up in the US. As to rifles in Texas or the south in general, you put them in the trunk of the car or the bed of the station wagon and go, people carried them openly on the streets. There were gun shops downtown so if you really wanted to be cool put them in a gun case (there were multiple reports of that from Dallas that day) But more likely just park in the lot behind a building, put the gun inside a raincoat or jacket or have it in a package, take them out of the car, use them, throw them in the back of the vehicle as was described and drive off since nobody opened any trunks of the cars exiting the parking lot. A serious shooter is going to use a bolt action or a semi-automatic since they expect to hit where they aim and they will have a clearly defined target in the open, take a couple of shots at the most and be gone. I recall our arms instructor saying - when we were issued M16s - look at the full auto switch setting and forget it. You only use if for fire suppression - to stop people shooting at you, and you better have plenty of clips or they will just come on and kill you. If you actually have a target you want to kill you use single shot in semi-auto mode.

Steve, you and I have discussed this before and I've written about it in detail so I hate to belabor it but - on the assumption the tactical team consisted of people that had been training for months and in some instances for years in infiltration, exfiltration and the tactics of a rifle ambush, it substantially reduces the preparation time and much of it would be done in Dallas, during the days before - given that you are attacking a soft target which in itself has some flexibility on time and even movement the best you could do is plan for a main route, a back up and be prepared to deal with some flexibility in the timing - which did happen (having the ambulance involved in a blocking move was part of that, a pickup stalled as a diversion for DPD security during the hour before hand another). Certainly they would have practiced routes and even caching of weapons, exfiltration exactly where they would occur and not stand out at all (recall the report of men in the parking lot putting a rifle in a car trunk...from women working in the Daltex in the evening and going home as I recall). As to exfiltration and infiltration, these guys had gone into and out of Cuba multiple times working against extremely tight security and making it - getting in out out of Dallas, into and out of the Plaza was child's play by comparison - walk towards the cops and don't run and you are good, which we saw happen with guys from behind the fence. Only runners get noticed, and the guy that ran down the railroad tracks did draw attention but then effectively vanishes off the DPD tapes....another diversion likely enough. All the movies you see about extensive mockups, training ranges, practice runs have to do with very "hard", fixed targets. This was very much different and like the soft target motorcade attacks they had practiced against Castro. Not even of the level of the sniper attack that had aborted before the BOP landings. As Martino said, the guys arrived in Dallas at least week in advance, reconnoitering the route, selected shooting sites and no doubt practiced elements of the exfiltration (remember the report of guys with a rifle on the knoll only days before and how slow DPD was to respond to that - just another test of timing and police routes and communications). Bottom line, this was an infantry ambush on a soft, mobile target operating on a known route and with a fixed destination. As to the the weapons, they could have sighted them in on range or out in the country. Takes maybe a dozen shots if you plan to use a scope, probably less with iron sites. -- sorry to repeat myself, I suspect you were looking for others to respond but I'm still here...grin