Larry Hancock
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Posts posted by Larry Hancock
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To be specific Prouty was on the Joint Chiefs staff in SACSA, an organization initially set up to provide military assets covertly to the CIA and later to begin preparing for supporting the process of transferring certain covert military operations from the CIA to DOD. Those included both covert action and counter insurgency activities.
https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP80B01083A000100120013-8.pdf
In that role Prouty provided support to certain CIA projects, one of them being the initial Cuba Project. In that particular task he was roundly criticized by CIA field officers for being obstructionist and bureaucratic - their terms for him were pretty blunt. My friend David Boylan found a few documents describing that and may post them here if he follows that. Safe to say the project CIA officers were not at all happy with the support they were getting from the military.
As an Air Force officer detailed to the Joint Chiefs staff and working with the CIA Prouty would have had little to no personal exposure to LeMay when LeMay was heading SAC and likely little with him even when LeMay joined the Joint Chiefs - although LeMay may well have signed some of his paperwork. But he was not head of the staff nor was he in a liaison relationship with senior officers at the CIA.
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This letter clearly came from the work/research the LaFontaines had done - they were working closely and directly with Marina and they were also behind her request for Oswald's income tax materials.
I'm not recommending the book per se but it gives extensive background as to the points in her letter so anyone interested in them should take a look at what they found and what they claimed as context for her letter.
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My cut would be that, as DeMohrenschieldt said, Oswald was something of a proto hippie - interested in a lot of things that were a bit contrarian to his raising and environment. We know he was more liberal about race, he was interested in things that his peers were not - like socialism, life in Russia, the Cuban revolution. All of which doesn't make him a Communist or a Castro supporter, it means he was curious. His fellow marines testified to those interests. But Oswald was also quick to pick up on Russian hypocrisy, you see that in his manuscript were he really guts Russia for using the communist movement for nationalist ends.
My suspicion is that from the beginning, Oswald managed to combine his curiosity with opportunities....starting with the OSI and communist provocateur bar girls in Japan. By the time he gets to New Orleans is is walking a tight rope between his own interests and people who are manipulating him for their own agendas.
So, yes I suspect he was already something of a "source" when he went to Russia, how much knowing vs how much manipulated is the question - but by the time you get to New Orleans, as you say, his shenanigans were being orchestrated. On the other hand, I also have a feeling Oswald was bright enough to at least at times thinking he was playing the manipulators for his own interests. He just got in way over his head, thought he was in control but had no idea how many people were pulling his strings in various ways. So, interested in Cuba and Castro and the Cuban revolution - yes. A radical Castro supporter - no. But very possibly portraying himself differently according to the game he was playing - anti-communist marine vet to the exiles and fellow traveler to those representing themselves as Cuban agents.
Which left him in a terribly exposed position of being both witting - and unwitting.
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Thanks Ron, I know I'm a bit conservative and can be a contrarian but my goal is to parse the conspiracy as finely as I can. My best guess for how Oswald was "tagged" goes line this - first, by the time he got to New Orleans he was a known figure to both the FBI and CIA and was a cooperative source for the FBI. He was also under consideration for CIA use in propaganda and possibly for joint FBI/CIA use in AMSANTA. Both of those explain why there are missing records in both agencies. One of the risks both agencies always face is having their assets turned against them (whether knowingly doubled or patsied). Both have suffered from that repeatedly and we know they do damage control by destroying records...its just SOP.
But as far as being selected as a patsy, I believe it was Oswald's high profile media visibility as a Castro supporter in New Orleans that got him picked as someone who would point to Castro. We have good evidence that he was being used in some fashion in regard to an incident in the DC area and his own letters verify that and associate him not only with Castro but with CPUSA. At that point in time he was "tagged" to point to Castro....but unfortunately we have no clear clue by who....Nagell tells us it was Cubans posing as Castro agents, there is some evidence to support that but maybe he was just being told to play with them....in any event that aborted and he ended up in Dallas.
We have some pretty good leads that in Dallas he was doing some strange things on his own that look a lot like he was voluntarily being a dangle...for the FBI? That would make a lot of sense given the gun buys going on and the signs they were all over the House on Harlandale. That scenario is also cooperated by Hosty's remarks about Oswald being under surveillance and meeting with subversives..
So as far as I can tell it was in Dallas, where his movements were being monitored and his own use of alias, post office boxes, fake name and fake ID suggest he was either playing at being an source on his own accord or encouraged to do so - and that was known to the people he was associating with - that he became a true patsy, especially once he went to work at the TSBD. One thing that argues against his being a knowing part of the plan at that point is his continued search for a job including applying for jobs elsewhere after his employment at the TSBD (that application is on record).
So, no, he didn't just wonder into the trap, it was the culmination of his activities over several months by that point. I suspect if we could see the Joinnedes (sp) records we would have some support for that...which is why multiple judges have denied access to them. And if the FBI files in New Orleans had not been destroyed there would be more - ditto for all the FBI subversive division files in Dallas. And ditto for the Domestic Contact files. But up to the day of the assassination it appears the FBI was watching him and viewed him as a window into the subversive activities they were tasked to deal with, and then what had been a useful source turned into a terrible threat for two agencies.
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To elaborate a bit, Robertson had been assigned to obtain information from Martino upon his release from Cuba - but beyond that he appears to have bonded with him and maintained a close social contact through the following months; Martion's son told me Robertson was frequently at their home. Martino's son actually observed the bus with the Alpha 66 team members outside his house prior to the mission leaving Miami.
The CIA actually sponsored the TILT mission, literally taking charge of it - that was supported at Western Hemisphere level by J.C. King, approved by the Deputy Director and under the supervision of Shackley at JMWAVE. A variety of CIA assets including personnel were assigned to and went on the mission; Robertson was the mission leader. However there is absolutely no record - that I could find - that the Special Group Augmented or the President were advised of it and they were officially charged with approving all JMWAVE supported missions.
And while the mission itself appears to soured Morales and Robertson on Bayo, it appears not to have damaged Robertson's relationship with Martino as they they continued to communicate on a regular basis.
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Really glad you brought that up David, as I recall there were more than one appeals to Martino to go to his CIA contacts with a plea for help in getting members of the team out of Cuba - but at that point both Robertson and Morales essentially felt the CIA had effectively been used by Bayo (with his story of Russian defectors ready to testify to Congress about Russian missiles still in Cuba) and were of no mind to respond.
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Interestingly the scenario of Castro "turning" a CIA strike team against JFK is exactly what Roselli offered to Washinton DC in the winter of 67/68 just as the Garrison investigation was getting underway...it was taken to Warren, to the FBI, to the Secret Service and even to LBJ and nobody wanted to touch it....even though CIA was well aware of Roselli's very real Castro assassination efforts.
Personally I happen to think that was just a spin on what really did happen, that individuals who had indeed been sent in for attacks on Castro were turned against JFK, just not by Castro. Roselli was presenting something close to the truth, always the best disinformation.
I did follow the logic of the fake infiltration scenario but I simply don't believe it was doable or done, or for that matter why something so complex would be necessary. Certainly makes for a good story though...and one I gave a lot of credence to in the earlier years when we had relatively little information about TILT, who proposed it, who authorized it, who ran it, etc.
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Robertson and Morales reached the conclusion that Bayo had actually cooked up the thing to leverage the CIA into inserting a heavily armed group into Cuba....and Pawley concluded, after watching them launch into some heavy seas, that they had so overloaded the boat with people and weapons that it had foundered.
Two arguments support that; first if you look at the photos the guys were indeed very heavily armed and the number of them going onshore was totally out of line with meeting a resistance group and actually bringing out Russians....it just made no sense, nor did the fact that at the last minute Bayo told Robertson a couple of them were going in and staying on island.
So in terms of the people and heavy weapons sent on shore, it made no sense for a covert exfiltration. And getting a team on island was hard....most of the exile infiltration efforts had been failing; this mission involved a radar equipped yacht, a shadow vessel doing radar coverage and the best boat team available. A very strange way to "hide" people...how do you know you can get them out when you want them? Basically - if you had assembled a special team to kill JFK...why would you put them into Cuba?
The Black Nine exfiltration is a totally different story, different people, different scenario - and again, why ship nine guys out of the country when you already have them off the grid, being paid, with no oversight at all and simply in the bull pen waiting for the Artime AMWORLD thing to jell - not to mention the fact that several of them were DRE and could quite easily operate within the DRE circles in both New Orleans and Dallas.
Which of course is exactly what I think happened...
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Yes, very much so - the Luces specifically made sure that both Life and POST had guys in Miami looking for stories on exile missions; I have some great photojournalism copies in my files. They paid their way onto the boats and bought stories if they didn't get to go. Their whole point was to embarass the administration by showing what the Cuban exiles were doing and the US was not. The TILT mission carried that to exponentially higher levels with JC King allowing a photojournalist on the mission - something that violated every security reg in the book. And the CIA didn't even obtain copies of the photos, which do show some of their people. King also knew there was an agreement to get the full story - once the Russians came out - to a Congressman who was prepared to immediately open hearings and crucify JFK over missiles in Cuba.
It really was not about the Luces personally funded people, it was about LIFE and TIME beating the drum for direct action against Cuba.
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Hi Bill, fortunately I can tackle both of those and they are developed in much more detail with the documents and analysis on the CD I referenced.
First off, Jones was the intelligence officer for the 112th at that specific time (although he held both positions at different points). It would have been the unit commander and the operations officer who would have had direct knowledge if the 112th HQ had been requested to provide security - and the commander specifically told the ARRB that no such request had been made and no personnel had been deployed. As an alternative, it might have been the case that a local request in Dallas could have been passed on to the Dallas 112th office...but the Dallas commander said no to that as well in his remarks to the ARRB inquiry . So did several individuals on the Dallas 112th staff that were interviewed. The ARRB analyst also determined that such a request would not have normailly come from the Secret Service to the military other than in the case of trips and visits to military installations or some location where there was not a sufficient local law enforcement presence.
So why did Jones say what he did....I really have no clue other than he appeared to talk about many things he really had no personal knowledge of...in this instance it looks more like the questioning was trying to get him to say that the folks with ID could have been military and he went along with it....(for that matter, I'm not sure that there were even that many guys in Dallas but the ARRB did collect the roster). I would also add that there is no record of any such request in Lawson's report and for that matter the Sheriff's department was told they would not be needed for security, which would have been the first choice for back up over the 112th. Instead the DPD called in its police reserve officers to fill in the mid-block gaps in the security coverage on the route...that is documented. Was Jones just being too "helpful", beats me - I can't even figure out why they called him other than the commander of the Dallas 112th unit.
On the Hidell card, actually Jones brags about that a lot and if you examine the communications going back and forth from him to the police intel folks in Dallas, he does get credit for raising the Hidell name. The reason he could do that is that his files contained a copy of a report (Army intel was on distribution for matters pertaining to FPCC) out of Dallas and one of the FBI reports there speculates that Oswald and Hidell were indeed the same guy and Oswald was using it as an alias in building up an FPCC group that did not really exist. That afternoon Jones was eager to float that name to everyone but it had originally come into his files from the FBI much earlier, during Oswald's time in New Orleans.
Anyway, those are very good questions and I spent quite a time slogging though all the documents, both separately from the 112th and from out of the ARRB work before I could timeline them to the extent of knocking some of the mystery out of it.
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I'm totally with you on this Steve - and one of the real issues with Jone's testimony is that he was asked all sorts of questions about topics he had no first hand experience with or professional exposure too. Certainly he was Army intelligence and asking him about military field intelligence would have been fine, if irrelevant, but the committee members also started tossing all sorts of broader intelligence issues and practices at him - in regard to Oswald, his defection, his behavior etc. And Jones showed no hesitancy to respond to all of them, not at all bashful about going out of his own ballpark.
However, aside from Jones, there is a large amount of 112th information that is relevant. Its documents reveal the tasking of the Army's domestic units with monitoring the FPCC and traffic and from Cuba. They also give us our best information about weapons dealing in Dallas, purchasing efforts by the Cuban exiles and probably gun dealing by Jack Ruby. All good stuff which does not get nearly enough attention in my view.
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Frank Sturgis talked with anybody and everybody in the Cuban exile and American volunteer community....he was close to both Buchanan brothers. Of course by 63 he was acting as a source for the CIA and reporting on all them as well.
As to Morales, no, never seen anything of that sort. He did have access to information about Alpha 66, in fact as I pointed out elsewhere the CIA had sources deep inside Alpha 66 operations and both Morales and JMWAVE knew about their missions before they were launched. Alberto Fernandez was one of those sources and the crew of his Tejuna was well connected to the Alpha 66 missions - a couple of them became leading Alpha 66 figures.
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I don't know that its a smokescreen but I consider it a dead end myself. Unfortunately it served as a diversion to close down the question of people with fake ID in the plaza - a real sign of conspiracy. On the Strike Command cable, we have discussed that many times and I consider it a standard advisory circulated out of DC to multiple commands and re-transmitted by some...but that's just me.
Certainly there were separate channels of communication, the nation was opening new ones throughout that period, to deal with continuity of government in a nuclear attack....for those that really want to understand the depth and breadth of that effort (which I have never seen full discussed in JFK venues) I would recommend Raven Rock by Garrett Graff for the best possible understanding - it goes far deeper than either I did in Surprise Attack or Peter Dale Scott did on his writing about COG.
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I really should add that the reason the HSCA took testimony from Jones and dug into the rumor about the 112th was that they were attempting to explore the rumors about unknown men showing security credentials in the plaza the day of the assassination - as in the DPD encounter behind the fence. The sad thing is that Jone's testimony was used to propose that the unknown personnel were military intelligence and that closed the door on the whole matter... Which is really sad since the FBI was holding a report of someone who had gone to Dallas, carrying fake secret service ID - Roy Hargraves. That lead could have been really productive but for some reason Jones was called, gave testimony and the whole issue was wrongly laid to rest.
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I'm not sure it was not in the podcast - it is a bit confusing but its important to remember that Morales was in charge of JMWAVE operations including maritime operations in 1963 so his interest in boats is not that far off base. As I recall the document in question he was actually responding that a boat which had been proposed or referred to WAVE for potential use was not really acceptable. When we first started digging into TILT years ago it was all ready mysterious but fortunately we now have a load of actual documents on it including Robertson's lengthy after action report. I should point out thought it still remains very anomalous and is one of the most obvious examples of senior CIA officers knowingly supporting something that could have essentially destroyed JFK's presidency - without informing the president, the Special Group Augmented or RFK about the mission - that's a really big deal. If you want "rogue", you find it in TILT....which was approved by J.C. King, one of the most aggressive senior officers and someone who draws little attention.
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I guess I will have to weigh in again as a contrarian...sorry Bill.
This is a point that was extensively investigated by the ARRB, who interviewed and took statements from several of the actual individuals in the Dallas office of the 112th, including the office commander. All those individuals stated that they had no orders for involvement in the president's security and in fact described their other activities that day. I would encourage everyone to check out the ARRB work, interviews and reports on the 112th; I collected much of it in paper form and Lancer made it available on CD years ago.
That CD also contains the ARRB inquiry into Col. Jones statements and his role and duties in 1963 - as well as information from the unit commander about the security issue. One of the real questions in play being why Jones was called to testify rather than the actual unit commander, unit operations officer, or more importantly the Dallas office commander - who would be the one with the most immediate knowledge.
The CD also includes the communications between Jones (intelligence officer at the time; not operations officer) and Dallas including all the background on the information in his files about Oswald and his communications with Dallas DPD.
I've posted on all this many times and I expect its just beginning to bore folks so the best I can do is recommend that you obtain and read the document collection yourselves and make your own call; I will say that the ARRB military staff member made a huge effort to dig into this because of Prouty's claims about security stripping and all that is addressed in the ARRB files and in the CD collection as well.
http://jfklancer.com/catalog/hancock/index.html
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I have not listened to this particular episode but the boat used on the TILT mission belonged to Pawley, he also leased a seaplane that was used on the mission. The Pawley yacht was actually shadowed on its trip in and out by one of the large CIA mother ships, providing radar coverage for the mission. There is a separate document which has to do with Morales commenting on a boat that was being considered for maritime missions circa November, nothing to do with the Pawley mission.
The TILT mission was certainly not faked, as a matter of fact it was photographed in extensive detail - in violation of all CIA security practices; in fact a great deal about the mission was in violation of standard practices.
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Ron, what I've been trying to show with this is that Moore was simply doing the routine job you would expect from DCS, just as the FBI agents that contacted Oswald on his return from Russia were doing their routine day job. Its not necessary to add any mystery now that we have learned a good a bit about how these agencies work. Oswald should have been contacted and he and Marina should have been monitored - which they were. The Dallas CIA DC office was clearly informed as was the Dallas SAC/FBI office...and they initiated standard protocols. It appears CIA may have been a little more circumspect with Oswald, but then he had come home with a Russian wife who had associations with Russian intelligence via her Uncle (at a minimum).
As I tried to show in the various links, this sort of thing was routine work for DCS. Of course the question is, did either CIA or FBI decide to carry their relationship with Oswald further, knowingly or not. Its pretty clear FBI did, whether both agencies did is a good question and I've speculated they did so in conjunction with their joint AMSANTA program targeting the FPCC and intel collection inside Cuba.
What I've been trying to emphasize with this though is that it would have been routine to find CIA/DCS files on Oswald - and FBI Division 5 files on Oswald. The fact that we don't suggests that those records had to be removed, destroyed, whatever. Hosty revealed Oswald had been under special subversive contact observation in Dallas...those records disappeared. Bottom line to me is the disappearance of both DCS contact records and FBI records clearly shows that Oswald was a far better known figure to the intel agencies than they wanted to admit after assassination.
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Yes Steve, David B. was indicating that with all the documents he has from Miami which relate to interviews at the screening center. The center was officially under DCS but most of the interviewing of the refugees and exiles was done by the Cuban Intel Group under JMWAVE because they had the language ability to carry that off.
DCS overall had the responsibility for interviewing refugees and exiles that might have useful information as well as Americans who had been in communist countries like Russia and Cuba...you see that in several of the document links I posted.
It would have been standard operating practices to interview Oswald after his time in Russia, and to collect information on his experiences and contacts there. And clearly headquarters advised Dallas of his return and directed that information be obtained about he and Marina. Some information may have already been obtained directly form him as soon as he arrived back in the U.S; there are indications that did happen.
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An interesting point of corroboration for that scenaio ( one I pointed out to Anthony on my blog) is the photo of the south side of Elm street where a bullet track was reported in the grass and where a crime scene inquiry was conducted (but never documented). This is the area where the fellow is photographed picking something out of the grass and putting it into his pocket.
In an associated photo, the two men - who have examined something in the grass - are pointing back and looking to what can only be presumed to be their idea of where the bullet came from and they are most definitely pointing at the opposite end of the TSBD than the purported snipers nest.
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OK, working this in real time with David. Per the following document it looks like the routing "slug" for Domestic Contacts is "DCD" - which is Domestic Contacts Division which certainly makes sense. That would be followed by information on the generating or designated field office, in the case below Miami.
Note how widely the information in this particular domestic contact report is shared including SecDef, JCS, Air Defense Command and NORAD. That's unusual but so was the incident; however it does make the point some types of information were widely shared by the CIA and vice versa.
https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=72673&search="manuel_chavez"#relPageId=2&tab=page
So to the question, if you see a document going or coming related to Oswald and see "DCD" as either the originator or on the distribution list...give a shout. There really should have been a bunch given on how many we see for much lower profile individuals than Oswald.
By the way, looking at some other documents David is sending me now, headquarters for Domestic Collections appears to be designated as "C/CD/CIA" which of course is chief, collections division, CIA
https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=40162&search=Gleichauf#relPageId=1&tab=page
Now we know what to look for...find an Oswald document with DCD on it or with routing to C/CD/CIA and we are off to the races.
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Craig, on you comment about FBI mail intercepts. Actually we know that the FBI did intercept his mail coming into the US including his magazine subscriptions; he complained to the Post Office about that. have often wondered in the past if the FBI hadn't intercepted any of Oswald's mail after returning to the States. For that matter he was placed on an FBI watch list and that suggests that in New Orleans and Dallas later, his post office boxes might have been monitored (we often forget that his claim to be an FPCC officer should have kept him on the watch list, which included all those individuals who were to be picked up in case of war or a national security emergency).
A few years back we also have an FBI document which shows the mailing address of his brother had been changed - again suggesting that they were monitoring Oswald's mail and tracking his communications. Strangely enough we have nothing else in the files to support that - but that is likely because the regional office Section 5 / Subversive files were likely destroyed.
Its all part of the overall picture that teases us that agencies were much more focused on him than they would want to admit later...
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Michael, that is part of the problem. We know that domestic contacts was active in contacts with individuals traveling to communist countries:
We know the CIA had to do some dancing around but eventually admitted that Oswald files may have been retained in separate places for certain periods of time and not in his central 201.
What we need are some samples of actual domestic contacts documents so we can see what the officer routing headers are, the sorts of information we are now familiar with for Plans/Operations, CI,. Security etc. If we can find that we can look at documents from other groups within the CIA and see if anything on Oswald was being routed to them...and from whom. At this point I'm just beginning to realize we have talked about Domestic Contacts and Domestic Operations for decades but we don't seem to have the sort of document collection we now have on the other CIA departments. Or perhaps someone does and its just not me.I've asked David to help by looking at the documents from Miami where they did run a screening center....which interestingly enough was staffed by people from the JMWAVE Cuban Intelligence group. Perhaps that will help. At this point I wish I knew exactly what to look for but logically there must have been a domestic contacts file on Oswald given not only Moore's activity in Dallas but simply the overall tasking and mission of the group. The FBI approached him and asked for help and he agreed; why would the CIA not have done the same?
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I just finished blogging about this issue since Domestic Contacts is one of the areas where there is certainly a black hole in regard to correspondence and documents which should have contained files on Oswald. Clearly Moore was advised to inquire into Oswald on his return and that should be documented as should the De Mohrenschildt contacts. Yet we have no Domestic Operations documents at all - and we should have been looking for them. In doing some checking with other researchers I find that not only do we not have any files from that group but we are unsure of what the distribution code should have been - and they should appear as a distribution office on several types of documents pertaining to him. Domestic Contacts and Domestic Operations is a really neglected area of research just as the Office of Security was before Malcolm really began to dig into it. https://larryhancock.wordpress.com/
I'm certainly interested in whether anyone else has Domestic Contacts reports or distribution codes.
Marina Oswald Porter's Letter to the ARRB -- April 1996
in JFK Assassination Debate
Posted
Joe, I explored Ruby and the local Texas weapons dealing circa 1963 at length in SWHT/2010....largely based on initial leads from the LaFontaine's research but with lots of new documents they had not seen and also with documents from the 112th on the Terrell Army theft which is very key - including Ruby and a connection through his club with one of the suspects.
There are a host of leads showing Ruby was indeed involved in that theft and the transfer of the weapons...which would have brought him to the attention of several parties trying to do business with the Cuban exiles that were the target of a sting being run by the FBI and an Army source on the exiles attempts to buy weapons through Masen.