Larry Hancock

I've been posting this all weekend because it says it better than pretty much anything else:

David, as for myself I'm fully committed to my new book coming out in a couple of months and to my final thesis on the conspiracy; delving back into Nagell beyond the analysis that I did in the work on by CD is just not in the cards. Beyond that, my own take has come to be that Nagell provided very useful information on Oswald in Japan, as far as early visits to the Soviet Embassy there and his cooperation in certain activities (which would have been ONI driven); Nagell was only an observer. Very possibly one of many watching what was going on with efforts to collect information from American GI's. I've also come to believe that other than offering early information about Oswald being approached by unknown Cubans in New Orleans, with said Cubans manipulating him while he played along feeling he was a source on them, there is little to be gained about the actual attack in Dallas because he was off the grid at that point. His revelations about Oswald could have been sensational in 1964, now they are simply corroborative. On your questions, as to Alpha 66, anybody watching contemporary events or even reading magazines would have tossed up their name in regard to Cuba....and we have to be cautions because many individuals who had joined Alpha 66 were also DRE members or members of other groups at different points. On Ferrie and hypnosis I'd have to dig back into the remarks and timing of that to even have an opinion. I certainly don't think Nagell actually went to Cuba and met either Raul or Fidel; at best he had been given a rather minimal assignment to monitor Oswald by Soviet agents in Mexico City, something which he only did marginally once he got back into the United States. His travels and activities certainly don't reflect a total focus on Oswald in 1963. And his remarks suggest that his Soviet contact and his CIA contact - who I feel was Henry Hecksher - both dropped off from him by summer. Which makes since given Hecksher's new AMWORLD assignment (we do know he had been in MC when Nagell was though). I don't think Nagell could have known exactly what Oswald's role in Dallas was; he would have been guessing after the fact. He did however know that as of New Orleans he was being played as a patsy so I would guess he would have figured the same for Dallas? Beyond that, as with most sources and especially with Nagell who was highly situational; I would generally trust what he was writing or even telling his attorney or the court immediately after his arrest. After you get past 1964/65 I tend to take it all with a couple of pinches of salt. Dick may feel very differently. My attitude is based on the total volume of his correspondence.

Its really no mystery, Nagell was definitely referring to Alpha 66 in his remark...however there is no sign that he ever had any contact or real information about them other than what he may have picked up in Mexico City where they were active that fall. They had also been getting the most media attention in 1963 due to their raids into Cuba. As I said, Nagell provided a list of the Cubans he did monitor in Miami and they were almost entirely all right wing type individuals not groups per se....people like Masferrer and his ilk that were really pretty marginalized at that point but who had gotten lots of media attention in prior years. As to Angel and Leopoldo, Nagell was referring to at least one (possibly both) of them who was a Cuban exile who had been taken into the Army for infantry officer training under the program pushed by RFK...a number of those people were being recruited by Artime and Segundo Borges beginning in the summer of 1963, some of them left the program to go into AMWORLD. David Boylan and I have been writing about them in our Wheaton Names research. Some of them and some of their friends did circulate though both the New Orleans area and on into Dallas beginning in August through November. And some of their friends in the DRE were most definitely under FBI monitoring and were saying very bad things about JFK. And some of them also ended up in both Chicago, New Orleans and Dallas. The good news is that we know a lot more about some of these things than when Nagell's story first surfaced so it can be cross checked, something critical to any source. And with any source, what Nagell knew from first hand experience (some of which can be corroborated) has to be balanced) against his full remarks, some of which had to have been speculation.

And here I was thinking that a monograph on how the whole Dallas attack came together would be enough...grin. My problem is that after walking through Nagell's remarks in a chronological order I have to accept that some of the things he said at certain points, especially after his wife took off with his kids and his whole life focused on getting them back, were truly situational. He spent as much time backing off remarks he had made as making them earlier. On one point I am convinced, as you said, that Nagell was aware of Oswald's attempts to contact the Soviet embassy in Tokyo and of the fact he was monitored by intelligence in doing that..both American and Russian intelligence. Which means Oswald was under suspicion by the Russians from that point on (the KGB was well famed...as is the FSB....for its meticulous dossiers as well as its utter paranoia). If you accept that, and Nagell's spy games in Mexico City during the missile crisis, it certainly makes sense that the Soviets might contact him there and ask him to look in on Oswald who was by that time in the US. It is also true that one of the most radical and active groups as of fall 62 was Alpha 66, which did have a presence in Mexico City and harassed the Cubans. So they may well have been mentioned as a potential problem to Nagell. However after that point you really have to get into the facts of exactly what Nagell did versus what he may have said later. Was he in Dallas, we don't know that....was he in Miami and New Orleans, yes he was. Did he leave New Orleans in a panic and do something really dramatic to take himself out of play and safely into jail...yes he did. And at that point he gets to read newspapers and later books in prison, right up to the Garrison investigation when he gets to talk to folks about Oswald again. Did Nagell add things to his remarks to make his story more convincing and get attention, I suspect he did at times and then downplayed that at other times. All that is what I tried to capture in my (not a monograph but overview and analysis) of the Nagell document collection I put onto CD with Lancer. What I would really love to see is for someone to go over those exact documents and see if they either agree or disagree with my analysis. http://jfklancer.com/catalog/hancock/index.html If someone does that perhaps we could turn the point / counterpoint into a new monograph...

Let's keep this straight, Nagell said he was asked to monitor Oswald because the Soviets thought he was a wild card and could do something to embarrass them...especially if he began talking to Cubans that were radical and unpredictable. However if you look at the names Nagell gave as the people he himself monitored in Miami, none were Alpha 66. And the Cubans he describes meeting Oswald were not linked to Alpha 66 but most recently to Army training, having just come out of it. As to Oswald, the only thing Nagell knew was that Oswald had been recruited for some sort of action on the East Coast, likely involving JFK, that was what he heard in New Orleans. Of course even if you write Nagell out of the whole story, proof that Oswald was talking about going to the East Coast and actually talking about going underground is found in his letters to SWP and CPUSA....for whatever motive. Nagell had no contact with any conspiracy or Oswald after New Orleans.

Those following this topic might be interested in the following document, dating to late Feb.1963 in which the Army appears to be considering operational use of Alpha 66, copies CIA on the subject and gets a response: https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=197497#relPageId=1&tab=page

The encounter with Phillips occurred during his HSCA testimony, Fonzi describes it in his book. I would like to add something here as well, one reason I'm very interested in John's research is that I hope he follows Veciana place by place and year by year after 1963. At this point, having developed a great respect for Phillip's capability for independent action I can see the possibility that there was some minor contact in Cuba - nothing at all like Veciana describes in his "far after the fact" book and which John totally deconstructs. I also hold it possible that Phillips did contact him personally and independently at least briefly inside Cuba and after Veciana came out, at least in a minor fashion - and that Phillips might have used him in Chile as he appears to have used other Cubans in yet one more attempt to assassinate Castro. At least it appears that somebody got Veciana a job with USAID there. All of that would have nothing in particular to do with who was in contact with or manipulating Alpha 66 given that Veciana was the finance and PR guy for them but not involved operationally in their missions from all accounts. There are some good indications that Phillips pursued his own private actions against Castro all the way up to his job at West Hemisphere - actually he admitted that. And in doing so he used various exiles independently of the Agency. While I don't trust Veciana at this time (and never fully did) I also have a great interest in things Phillips (the consummate actor) may have done on his own and perhaps John will dig up some of that in following Veciana on in time. On the other hand John may eliminate both Veciana and any contact with Phillips from the entire Dallas equation, which would be fine too.

David and Steve make good points about the long history of discussions on this forum; there have been some highly educational dialogs over the years and sometimes they tend to get lost in the past (and my own memory). And Steve illustrates a very important discussion, exploring the fact that there are actually a number of compartmentalized intelligence and security functions not only among agencies and services but within each. I've always been impressed that the Foreign Intelligence Board almost always gave much more accurate roll up estimates on "CIA operations than came from within Plans/Operations itself. I recently came across Bissell defending the intel on the landings in Cuba by saying they had consulted the higher level intel estimates - without noting that said estimate was highly negative about the chance of success in ousting Castro or triggering a broad revolt against him. Of course anybody listening to Bissell would have been advised to keep both hands on their wallet. We also forget that even the NSC had its own intelligence advisory staff, independent of the rest. To say that intel collection was fragmented in the sixties (and often highly competitive) would be accurate; of course that pales in comparison to what it is today.

As I understand it, the TSBD administrative offices were in a building a couple of blocks NE of the TSBD bldg. Actually that was where Ruth Paine mistakenly pointed out to Marina that Oswald worked. The storage facilities, the actual warehousing and shipping facility for the TSBD had been across the street in the Daltex and only moved over to the TSBD building less than a year before the assassination. Before that time that building had been a grocery warehouse...which was why the upper floors needed reworking to hold the heavier book cartons. Which is also why that fall several employees were relocated over to the new TSBD building to work on the flooring, which in turn created the stocking vacancy that Oswald filled. Molina would normally have worked in the administrative area in the other building although he certainly could have spent time in the store house, which was what the TSBD was - remember that building also contained a number of independent book related firms. All the above is from memory so I welcome any corrections, there was much written about the move of the Book Depository from the DalTex to the TSBD building in the early days of research, several articles in Jerry Roses Third and Fourth Decade journals including some great ones by William Weston, whom I only met once, briefly. Its really important background material but its been years since I dug into it. https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=48681&relPageId=24&search=texas_school book depository forth decade I suspect Bill has already gone into all this so he or anyone with a fresher memory should correct or flesh anything I got wrong.

Would you run though that here again Paul, are you suggesting Hosty was himself part of the conspiracy and that we need to toss all his remarks about Oswald?

Paul, about all I can say is that Stu actually went down and spent time with Ganis looking for more detail and while it remains interesting we are simply waiting for the Alberelli book to reach any further conclusions, or frankly for more data to assess. I really try to refrain from having an opinion before seeing all the data so at this point its an open question. I have tried to run down all the Cuban connections Ralph listed and all I can say is that they don't seem to help me connect any dots. What is clear is that lots of people talked to Skorzeney over time, some found him helpful, others (including military officers) did not. Depends who was asking him for what purpose. The most help he seems to have been was to give introductions and point to scientists and other military personnel he had known during his WWII service. As far as being at cross purposes with John, not so far as I know at this point. I've reviewed what he has presented and so far its pretty much things I had already seen and even written about. He is making some inferences that I expect he will support in his next works so I have to wait for that. But beyond that, as far as my own research goes, I have seen no factual evidence the military intelligence was directly involved in the attack in Dallas....I'm going to need a lot more than simply seeing former military officers within the DPD to make that case - and as I said earlier, I do personally object to accusing people of something like treason and conspiracy simply on the basis of propinquity. If that makes me too conservative, too contrarian or just too much of a pain in the rear, that's just me.

Good point David, actually this had been in play for so long I tend to forget some of those older threads...and there was some very good discussion back then. I do think that for some reason certain individuals - including Jack Ruby - are significant indicators as to the actual nature of the Dallas operation and the implication of that seems to have faded away over time. I think the same is true for the major implications of the conspiracy story that Roselli took to Washington, to Warren, the FBI, the Secret Service and even to LBJ as the Garrison investigation was just about to be made public...force out by De Torres ...all that seems to fade away in the face of new theories and suspects. As to Wheaton on Central America, I think Stu and I both feel that as soon as Wheaton tried to get Jenkins and Quintero to go on the record, even with some sort of deal, they did exactly as they told him they would and started planting misinformation, both with him and with others. For that reason we tend to be cautious about his remarks about Central America because if he was getting the majority of his info from them...as seems probable....it would likely be a mixture of true and false as any good misinformation had to be..

Ernie Lazar gave us some very good definitions of the official levels of sources and informants, including "provisional criminal informant" which Jack Ruby was in 1959. The highest level of informants, those potentially of use in an actual criminal case where charges had been brought and prosecution was going to occur got serious protection since they were likely to be used in court. I'm not sure what the equivalent was in subversive/security cases? I recently noted that Heitman describes both himself and Hosty as being on the "security beat" in Dallas, which is a lot different from doing criminal work. It also adds a lot of weight to Hosty's remark about Oswald being observed with "subversives".....

In terms not only of roles but of actual documents, travel, confessions I think I got pretty specific in NEXUS, beyond that to some extent I've been surprised that nobody has ever really engaged with that level of detail or the tactical scenario I spelled out in SWHT. I would have liked to see that sort of exchange... What I intend to do next is a final monograph, not necessarily a book, based in SWHT, NEXUS, my new book In Denial and the Wheaton Names research papers. There will be some new sources and citations but I did enough footnoting in the other work that it should not have to be repeated. Basically it will be a scenario, beginning circa 1958 that ends up with the attack in Dallas...my best effort to present my own conclusions of how matters jelled into a situation where the president was at actual risk beginning in the fall of 1963 and then was attacked in Dallas. How long this will take me, not sure, hope to be finished with it in 2020. It will be as factual as I can make it, with some speculation but minimal inference and maximum attribution to human sources.

I have no problems with coming out with names, I expect my final monograph on the subject to be far more specific than I was even in NEXUS. And roles need to be spelled out in some detail. But beyond that if you want to really tackle this seriously you have to connect the dots all the way....putting specific people in Dallas, spelling out their roles in a way that fits known facts and literally connecting the dots among all the folks you identify as witting or unwitting participants. If you can do that then I think this whole effort is making progress. But if you stay at the level of inference and just toss aroung terms like the "military", or the "CIA" then we are really on the same level as blaming the "mafia" or the "godfathers" or maybe the "ultra right". We have been doing that for a very long time and it just does not satisfy me personally, seems like too much of a projection of individual world views and preconceptions onto a crime. And we know that is literally always a bad idea.

That's a very interesting idea Bill, as you develop it could you elaborate on how he would inform on Molina - who worked in a different building. Do you think Oswald was to try and join Molina's veterans group or just engage him in conversation? Why was Oswald continuing to look for other work, was that just a cover of some sort. And did his informant job get changed to something that was taking him out of Dallas and maybe out of the country?

Its awfully easy to make such broad inferences...and I suppose it is satisfying. However murder is a crime and when making accusations of murder I would say that facts should be offered rather than inferences. I'd hate to see our justice system or for that matter our social system run based on inferences about certain segments or individuals inferred guilt..or for pretty much anything else for that matter. Have we really come that far from demanding facts. Talk about a slippery slope.

It probably would be really good to wait on some details beyond what John has posted so far....its always easy to speculate but actually connecting the dots in terms of personnel, movements and documented activities is another story. Otherwise you end up building your case on social networks, and presumed motives - and just one more scenario about how Dallas might have happened rather than how it actually did. Just a few months ago we were all eagerly awaiting similar details to bolster the case against Skorzeny and a Fascist network - and are still waiting. John has been straight forward in saying that we need to wait for his work to be published before evaluating it and that seems pretty reasonable. To date the documents he is presenting certainly show military interest in Alpha 66 and of course a military interest in Russian activity in Cuba (including getting intel on deployments and even samples of weapons). Having read his newer works repeatedly I'm expecting far more detail when he actually gets the next books in print. Then again, how much fun is just waiting...

Its impossible to know for sure but my suspicion is in line with Paul's above. At that time it was common for certain types of business phones to support multiple extensions, with a light/pressure switch for each. The light would remain on while a call was in progress but go dark when it disconnected. If she was at a phone which had buttons for several different extensions she might actually be saying that the lights went off on all the extensions because folks dropped off calls and were not using their phones as the motorcade approached. I've looked into this at some length over the years and there is no sign of any telephone outage or power outage in the local area of the TSBD or of Dallas overall.

Paul, I'm not in touch with Frazier - I just had the opportunity to speak with him briefly a few times at the Lancer conferences and at this point I don't think Debra is in contact with him either. Apparently someone is because he continues to appear at conferences; I just don't know who that might be.

Actually I don't think its a circus at all, the process is simply exposing the fact that individuals who claim to be the proponents of checks and balances actually are only as long as the checks and balances do not threaten the power structure which benefits their political careers and agendas. Beyond that the politicians who say they are willing to reach a conclusion while actually supporting obstruction of justice in sanctioning the withholding obvious witnesses and documentation are visibly outed in terms of their disdain for actual justice. Its sort of refreshing to see that level of hypocrisy so clearly exposed - nauseating yes but still its the ultimate transparency.

Totally with Mr. Niederhut and Paul on this one...just purely shameful...

I'm going repeat myself a bit here........Army contact with Veciana and Alpha 66 is nothing new, we have had documents revealing that for years, including the ones showing he was a designated Army source. Those documents clearly show the Army interest in him and Alpha 66 as a group was intel on Cuba and on Russia inside Cuba, including on Russian weapons. They also show that the Army was giving them some supplies including explosives and that at that point Alpha 66 trusted them more than the CIA - of course by that point most of the Cuban groups including DRE felt the same way about the CIA. I wrote about his Army connection back in 2006. We also know that the CIA had sources feeding them information on Alpha 66 and we have a document with Morales stating that Alpha 66 would be surprised at the extent of the information that CIA had on their missions, they knew about them in advance and apparently chose to let them proceed without being interdicted. They also chose not to interdict DRE missions although they appear to have been much more clueless about DRE military activities. Then in 1963 we have a memo from an Army staff member of the SGA expressing interest in using Alpha 66 operationally (given that their missions were generally more successful than many of the CIA's own) but a response from CIA speaking against that because Alpha 66 was uncontrollable. This was in the spring of 1963 after Mongoose when everybody was stumbling around trying to reset some plan against Castro...and at a time when that was occurring in a much broader group than just CIA. It was also a period in which JFK had opened the door to DOD becoming involved in covert ops against Cuba. Of course none of that has to do with what anybody else did with Veciana, including years later. Nor has anybody really put all the pieces together on what Phillips did with a variety of individual exiles in what appear to have been unsanctioned efforts against Castro for over a decade. If Veciana did follow Phillips to Chile with an AID job it would seem to speak more to Phillips than the Army so I'll be interested with what John does with Veciana from 1963 on. I think John has done a fine job of deconstructing Veciana's book, the book is highly sensationalized and goes way beyond anything he claimed before it came out - which was originally limited to having made contact inside Cuba with somebody he suspected to be CIA and then having also beem in contact with that person once he came out. Given that Veciana's group was involved in an assassination attempt on Castro and the fact that Phillips admitted working, under cover and in disguise, with a group inside Cuba I don't see how we can write off at least some minimal contact inside Cuba between Phillips and Veciana. Nor do I see how Veciana would become a key player in the Dallas conspiracy. I had my own questions about Veciana's reliability before the book and the book demolished his credibility for me; I don't know that I would believe much of anything he would say at this point...the book itself appears to be more than a bit of scam to me, even if he did have some contact with Phillips in Cuba or later. I'm certainly interested in what John does find out about Veciana, and about who may have manipulated Alpha 66 in general. There is an indication that the Army focused them on Russian targets and given the successes of their missions its always been a question if they were getting special intel from some source other than their own contacts inside Cuba.

I'm going repeat myself a bit here........Army contact with Veciana and Alpha 66 is nothing new, we have had documents revealing that for years, including the ones showing he was a designated Army source. Those documents clearly show the Army interest in him and Alpha 66 as a group was intel on Cuba and on Russia inside Cuba, including on Russian weapons. They also show that the Army was giving them some supplies including explosives and that at that point Alpha 66 trusted them more than the CIA - of course by that point most of the Cuban groups including DRE felt the same way about the CIA. I wrote about his Army connection back in 2006. We also know that the CIA had sources feeding them information on Alpha 66 and we have a document with Morales stating that Alpha 66 would be surprised at the extent of the information that CIA had on their missions, they knew about them in advance and apparently chose to let them proceed without being interdicted. They also chose not to interdict DRE missions although they appear to have been much more clueless about DRE military activities. Then in 1963 we have a memo from an Army staff member of the SGA expressing interest in using Alpha 66 operationally (given that their missions were generally more successful than many of the CIA's own) but a response from CIA speaking against that because Alpha 66 was uncontrollable. This was in the spring of 1963 after Mongoose when everybody was stumbling around trying to reset some plan against Castro...and at a time when that was occurring in a much broader group than just CIA. It was also a period in which JFK had opened the door to DOD becoming involved in covert ops against Cuba. Of course none of that has to do with what anybody else did with Veciana, including years later. Nor has anybody really put all the pieces together on what Phillips did with a variety of individual exiles in what appear to have been unsanctioned efforts against Castro for over a decade. If Veciana did follow Phillips to Chile with an AID job it would seem to speak more to Phillips than the Army so I'll be interested with what John does with Veciana from 1963 on. I think John has done a fine job of deconstructing Veciana's book, the book is highly sensationalized and goes way beyond anything he claimed before it came out - which was originally limited to having made contact inside Cuba with somebody he suspected to be CIA and then having also beem in contact with that person once he came out. Given that Veciana's group was involved in an assassination attempt on Castro and the fact that Phillips admitted working, under cover and in disguise, with a group inside Cuba I don't see how we can write off at least some minimal contact inside Cuba between Phillips and Veciana. Nor do I see how Veciana would become a key player in the Dallas conspiracy. I had my own questions about Veciana's reliability before the book and the book demolished his credibility for me; I don't know that I would believe much of anything he would say at this point...the book itself appears to be more than a bit of scam to me, even if he did have some contact with Phillips in Cuba or later. I'm certainly interested in what John does find out about Veciana, and about who may have manipulated Alpha 66 in general. There is an indication that the Army focused them on Russian targets and given the successes of their missions its always been a question if they were getting special intel from some source other than their own contacts inside Cuba.

If Ernie Lazar is not participating in this thread he should certainly be invited - I suspect he could offer major insights into the FBI office and group designations as well as to its routing codes.